Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Telesphere Came Through; AT&T/Sprint Let Me Down Message-ID: Date: 19 Oct 89 03:55:46 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 47 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 462, message 1 of 9 Last night, a night that will live in infamy, I finally arrived at a friend's house in the Mojave desert. I was supposed to leave on Saturday, but because of one thing and another the trip got delayed. It's about a seven-hour drive from the Bay Area to the High Desert, so to kill the time I listen to my favorite CDs. I let myself in, my friend not being at home, and proceeded to check my machine for messages. Reorder. Again and again. Thinking that the 800 translations might be messed up for some reason, I dialed the POTS number (you should always know the POTS number for 800 service!). Again, reorder. So I made a "thing" of it and dialed over and over. Finally I got an "all circuits are busy" recording. At that point, I just figured that Contel was messing up and looked elsewhere for entertainment. On went the TV, and it comes up with scene after scene of collapsed buildings, freeway structures, and then suddenly a shot of a very familier structure--the Bay Bridge. It seemed that while I was driving through Bakersfield, it was the "big one". With mouth hanging open, I watched all of the damage footage. Then they revealed the epicenter. No it was not SF or Oakland but in the Santa Cruz Mountains -- thirty-five miles CLOSER to my house than to the area so badly damaged. At that point I became a little anxious. How were my relatives in town? Was my house still standing? How were my clients faring (that I had left in the hands of an assistant)? No amount of dialing could break through. Then I realized that my desert friend had a 950 Telesphere account. SUCCESS! I made call after call using that account, noting the sluggishness of the Bay Area COs, which were probably completely overloaded. But the point is that I got through and determined that everyone was OK, my house was OK, but my clients were hit hard. I came home. On the way home, I listened to SF radio to get a feeling for what was going on and at one point spokepersons for AT&T and Sprint were crowing about how they were blocking calls from outside the area so that the local Bay Area network would not be overworked. Well, I am about to write a letter of appreciation to Telesphere and a show-cause request why I shouldn't cancel my AT&T and Sprint accounts. Thanks to Telesphere, I was able to handle some emergencies over the phone (not to mention putting my mind at ease). That was NO THANKS to AT&T and Sprint. Now, who is backing up whom? John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !