Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1991 9:02:33 EDT From: "Dave Niebuhr, BNL CCD, 516-282-3093" Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Phone Outages Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 440, Message 7 of 10 Lines: 34 "J. Philip Miller" writes: > "I had expected to see a posting from someone else here in St. Louis > because it has been front page news for the last several days that a > SWBT computer went out last friday with serious outages." > several hundred ATM terminals were not functional. > teller terminals within some branch banks were not functional. > money transfers for the Federal Reserve bank were disrupted. > off track betting at a local race track was not operational. That's nothing. Last winter, a computer malfunctioned in New Jersey and proceeded to shut down a good portion of whatever uses data lines for transaction processing: ATM's, stock exchanges, bank teller machines, etc. The geographical area was Northern New Jersey, New York City, Long Island and, I believe parts of Westchester County north of NYC. The shutdown might have even spread into lower Connecticut. I forget the cause but I think the malfunction was caused by a fire somewhere near the main switch. What surprised me was the apparent lack of a backup system and the following confusion along with the inability to take simple precautions. Dave Niebuhr Brookhaven National Laboratory BITnet and Internet: niebuhr@bnl.gov [Moderator's Note: A special mailing going out later tonight will contain excerpts from the {St. Louis Post Dispatch} report. This apparently was a major incident there last week. PAT]