Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: klg@dukeac.UUCP (Kim Greer) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Telesphere Came Through; AT&T/Sprint Let Me Down Message-ID: Date: 26 Oct 89 11:39:55 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: klg@dukeac.UUCP (Kim Greer) Organization: Academic Computing, Duke University, Durham, NC Lines: 58 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 476, message 1 of 10 In article john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: + [stuff deleted about finding out there was an earthquake] +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. +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, I sympathize with you. I really do know the feeling - I had the same experience trying to call my parents and brother in Charlotte in the aftermath of Hugo (the hurricane, not the car :^). I was mad at "the phone company" for not letting me through. Little did I know at the time that it really wasn't their fault, as there were thousands of lines down, as the eye of Hugo went right over Charlotte. (My neighbor who works at Duke Power told me that they had replaced over 4500 utility poles in Charlotte, to say nothing of Rock Hill, Gastonia, etc., and they still weren't through.) My folks got their power back seven days later, and the phone was back working on the eighth day. Anyway, what has this got to do with the Digest and your posting? I think the thing to remember is that AT&T and Sprint were not "crowing"; they were trying to do exactly what was the best option under the circumstances: prevent the network from crumbling under the weight of NON-EMERGENCY calls. I head on ABC at one point in a 5 minute period, there were over a million calls that were logged trying to get into San Francisco. (I think I got those numbers right). The tv networks were telling people not to call in, explaining the problem. Let's face it, the vast majority of incoming calls would do nothing the help the situation in the face of big time destruction. The system *had* to be alive to respond to outgoing EMERGENCY calls that had to do with saving lives and getting outside help in. I agree with the decision to block incoming calls, even if the lines were not down. Again, I sympathize with you, but I think you are wrong. What is the alternative? - letting literally millions of people trying to call into SF, SJ, etc. with little or no chance of getting through tie up the circuits? Most incoming calls were low priority; the outgoing were the most critical at the time. Kim Greer Duke Univ Med Ctr klg@orion.mc.duke.edu