David Tamkin <dattier@chinet.chi.il.us> (01/17/90)
One thing has caught my attention about news reports of Monday's AT&T
outage, whether on radio, on television, or in print: invariably
promotions for upcoming news about it and the first few sentences of
the item itself have talked about "problems for long-distance callers"
or "long-distance troubles." It's presented as a problem with
long-distance calling and then it segues to "AT&T spokespeople are
saying" or "according to AT&T" as if the two were one in the same.
Longer discussions of it get around to bringing up MCI and Sprint's
situations (being overloaded because AT&T customers were seeking
alternatives, for example), but most do not. Moreover, none
introduced the item as an AT&T-only problem, nor even as an AT&T
problem. It is called a long-distance problem with little or no
acknowledgment that "long distance" and "AT&T Long Distance" are not
synonymous these days.
David Tamkin PO Box 813 Rosemont IL 60018-0813 708-518-6769 312-693-0591
dattier@chinet.chi.il.us BIX: dattier GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN CIS: 73720,1570
[Moderator's Note: The {Chicago Sun-Times} had as their headline in
Tuesday's paper, "Calls Waiting!" and part of the human-interest side
of the story were interviews with business people -- particularly
telemarketing organizations -- who were pretty well out of action
Monday. The airline and hotel reservation people with their 800
numbers were also pretty hard hit by the events of the day. The
{Chicago Tribune} noted that AT&T spokespeople had *not* ruled out 'a
"computer virus" or act of sabatoge by a phreak unknown...' as the
source of their problem. PT]