Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Who's Using Whom? Message-ID: <2895@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 15 Jan 90 22:14:09 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 25 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 29, message 2 of 11 AT&T long distance has been severely disrupted today in the Bay Area due to a major cable cut, according to an AT&T operator I talked to. Why is this of any interest? Well, it seems that Sprint is down as well. Why? Sprint leases facilities from AT&T. So all of the ballyhoo about Sprint's fiber optics is, to some degree, actually AT&T's fiber optics. Sort of reminds one of the old story about how all gasoline comes from the same delivery truck. We have all of the advertising about product differentiation, and it turns out that aspirin is aspirin after all. So Sprint's advanced fiber optic network is, at least in part, AT&T's fiber optic network. Well, well. It is amazing what you can learn about someone when his pants are down! John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! [Moderator's Note: I really think the operator you interviewed spoke without full knowledge of the circumstances of the outage; that is, unless by coincidence there was also a major cable problem out there as well as the nationwide network problem. PT]