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From: robertg@oblio.arc.nasa.gov (Robert Gutierrez)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: AT&T Advertisement is Stupid
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Date: 9 Feb 90 02:23:50 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 87, message 4 of 13


KMP@s57.prime.com writes: 

> Place this under the heading of "Sprint Advertisement is Stupid".
> 1)  Will MCI reconsider their decision not to kick AT&T while it was
>     down?

Well, not that they're suing the s$!t out of each other, I'm sure marketing
has those ads waiting to be let loose.

> 2)  Has MCI had a major outage that would justify the tag on Sprint's 
>     ads, e. g., is there any reason to think Sprint more reliable than
>     AT&T?

Yep. About 1 year ago, in Illinois (no, *NOT* Hinsdale). Some tornado
came down on a microwave repeater tower in a corn feild, and where
once was a mighty tall tower was reduced to something resembling what
a spider web looks like when you smash it with a fly swatter.

Seems that's where MCI's upper region backbone came barrelling
through, like 24 DS/3 channels. The lower U.S. 'backbone' (Ha! An
uncompleted fiber right-of-way and about 6 DS/3 ckts.) had a hard
time, and the blockage went up to 65 percent at one point (one swich
made it to the 80 percent mark for a few minutes once). MCI has 5
levels of outages...1 through 4, and the 5th is called catostrophic.
Well, this was officially the 5th level. Took them about 3 days to get
a replacement tower put up. Not very pretty from where I was at
(Western Network Management in Hayward, CA.).

Anyway, that's why MCI hasn't pulled the 'No Major Outage' ads out.

     Robert Gutierrez/NASA Ames Research/NSI Project Network Operations.

[Moderator's Note: Would you believe Hinsdale was nearly *two* years
ago?  Time flies.  PT]