Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Thu, 27 Jun 91 9:26:42 EDT From: "William W. Arnold" Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: C&P Phone Outage 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 500, Message 6 of 9 Lines: 101 Quoted from the {Richmond Times Dispatch}, Thursday, June 27, 1991 Computer glitch curbs phone service to many Millions of Virginians could not make local phone calls yesterday afternoon. The cause: a computer problem in Baltimore. In all, as many as 6.3 million telephone lines in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia were affected. The problem began about 11:40 a.m. and phone service was fully restored by 9 p.m. "I've been with C&P for 17 years and I don't recall anything of this magnitude," said Paul Miller, spokesman for the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia. The glitch meant that many or all customers whose phones were connected to C&P's computer-assisted Intelligent Network could not make most local calls. Some long-distance calls were also interrupted. About 6.3 million of C&P's more that 7 million lines in the three stated and Washington are connected to the computerized network. In Virginia the company has 2.6 million lines. Coming in the middle of the business day, the failure idled thousands of phone-dependent workers and created headaches for many others. "Needless to say, there are a few newspapers being read today," said Vic Harper, a stockbroker with Scott & Stringfellow in Richmond. "The trading desk is pretty much dead." Brokers could call stock exchanges to make trades, Harper said, but they couldn't reach clients, and clients couldn't reach them. At Southside Regional Medical Center in Petersburg, the phone failure caused logistical problems. "There's been a couple of doctors who couldn't get," reported Julia Callis, a nursing supervisor. In one case, the hospital sent police to Dinwiddie County to find a physician. At Richmond Newspapers, the company that publishes this paper, classified advertising calls were down by at least one-third for the afternoon said George Johnston, a classified ad supervisor. The loss in business could run into thousands of dollars. "It's a very strange thing to sit here and hear no phones ringing," Johnston said. In the Richmond area, 911 emergency calls went through. However, many people, unable to complete local calls, flooded the emergency lines trying to get information, creating problems for police and fire communications workers. "We've got literally hundreds of extra phone calls," said J.P. Hoskin, supervisor for Richmond's Emergency Communications office. Most of the phone lines in Washington were affected, but high-level government agencies, including the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department said their communications were not greatly impaired. The problem was caused by a switching system that Bell Atlantic, C&P's parent company, began installing in the mid-'80s. Bell Atlantic pinpointed the trouble at a computerized "signal transfer point" of STP, in Baltimore. The STP determines how local calls are routed from one switching office to another. C&P has four STPs and they route calls in the in the district, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. Yesterday, the company was transferring some of the switching load from an STP in Washington to one in Baltimore when the latter computer signaled trouble and shut itself down. Normally, one of the other three STPs would provide a backup, said Sandy Granzow, spokeswoman for Bell Atlantic. But when the Baltimore STP electronically signaled it was entering a "trouble mode," it also sent a blizzard of spurious messages to the other STPs, causing them to shut down as well. Bell Atlantic vowed to review the system to find the bug responsible for the failure. "You can be sure it will be fixed," Ms Granzow said. The STP computers, in addition to providing fast switching, have also allowed C&P to introduce new services, such as Caller ID, which allows customers to learn the phone number of a caller before answering the phone Bell Atlantic, in its ads, calls the system its Intelligent Network. Coincidentally, a computer glitch disrupted phone service in Southern California for several hours yesterday, Pacific Bell said. William W. Arnold | has8wwa@cabell.vcu.edu | warnold@gnu.ai.mit.edu Student Consultant, Academic Computing, Virginia Commonwealth Univ.