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]