bill@fisher.eedsp.gatech.edu (06/27/91)
The following is presented verbatim from an AP dispatch.
APn 06/26 1838 Phone Outage
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Costly and frustrating telephone service
disruptions plagued millions of homes and offices in the nation's
capital and three nearby states Wednesday and officials blamed
computer malfunction.
Government agencies appeared to be faring better than private homes
and businesses. The White House said it felt no major impact and added
that in a pinch President Bush could get through to any telephone in
the country on special high-priority lines.
But Bell Atlantic said 6.7 million telephone lines in Washington,
Maryland, Virginia and parts of West Virginia were hit with service
disruptions.
Jay Grossman, a spokesman for Bell Atlantic, said the problem
affected most local calls and left outbound long-distance service
sporadic. He said inbound calls appeared to be functioning normally.
The disruption occurred about 11:40 a.m. EDT while workers for Bell
Atlantic's Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. in Baltimore were
working on a computer that controlled the distribution of traffic in
the calling network.
Backup systems that were supposed to reroute calls in the event of
a breakdown also malfunctioned.
C&P is a subsidiary of Philadelphia-based Bell Atlantic, one of
seven regional phone companies created by the 1984 breakup of the Bell
System. A disruption in the C&P system would not extend outside the
mid-Atlantic states that Bell Atlantic serves.
At early evening, officials said they were still not certain when
service would be restored. "The network has come back up temporarily
and then collapsed in places," said Michel Daley, a C&P spokesman.
The disruption forced people to improvise.
When office telephones malfunctioned, some workers tried the pay
phones on the street.
"This is just terrible," said Dee Sibley, who works for a
Washington legal firm. "We rely so heavily on the telephone to do our
business. Right now I'm standing here at a pay phone returning calls
from clients, some of whom we're working on important business for."
Joseph Deoudes, vice president and owner of District Courier
Services Inc. in Washington, said telephone problems "paralyzed" his
business.
"It's really rough," he said. "I'm not making any money today."
He said the business normally gets 500 to 600 calls for courier
services daily but had received only about 30 on Wednesday. He said he
had issued walkie-talkies owned by his company to several of his
busiest customers but added that more troubles on Thursday would lead
to layoffs.
"I have 15 couriers sitting here now and if it's like this at ten
o'clock tomorrow I'm sending most of them home," he said. He said two
weeks of troubles could put him out of business.
Communication by fax, which has become a mainstay of Washington
life, slowed to a crawl.
Eric Birn of the public relations firm David Apter & Associates
found that he had to resort to the ways of the past.
"Because of today's phone fiasco through D.C., we're sending you
this the old fashion way -- by foot," he wrote in a message
accompanying an announcement of a news conference.
Many businesses that rely on the telephone were hurting.
Leighton Johnson, who works at a downtown branch of Domino's Pizza,
said that "business is definitely slower than it usually is this time
of the day."
Calls between the White House, Pentagon and other agencies were not
affected by the outage. Nor were calls to the emergency 911 lines.
At the White House, a few difficulties were encountered. But
overall, officials said, there was little impact.
"We never had a problem with our phone system," said White House
spokesman Gary Foster. He said that the White House also had the
capability of making a phone call to a specific phone in the affected
areas "in an emergency."
State Department officials also said they were having no problem.
They said they were relying on the department's internal five-digit
dialing system for local calls and that long-distance seemed
unimpaired.
But two State Department officials caught on Capitol Hill with an
urgent message for their office tried in vain to break through, first
on congressional phones, then on a cellular phone. Finally, they had
to hail a cab for the 20-block ride to Foggy Bottom to deliver the
message in person.
The computer system that malfunctioned had been in place for about
two years. Ironically, the company's older equipment continued to
operate properly, officials said.
"The system is almost entirely computerized," Grossman said.
Asked whether sabotage was suspected, Daley said, "I would think
not ... that would surprise us all if it was."
------------
Ironically or perhaps coincidentally, PacTel had some similar problems
in the San Diego area, also on Wednesday. A buggy generic? Anyone
know the real story?
Bill Berbenich, School of EE, DSP Lab | Telephone: +1-404-894-3134
Georgia Tech, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 |
uucp: ...!{backbones}!gatech!eedsp!bill | Group 3 fax: +1-404-894-8363
Internet: bill@eedsp.gatech.edu | or: +1-404-853-9171
[Moderator's Note: A message later in this issue discusses the
problems going on at the same time in California. PAT]