atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Telecom Service & Providers Verizon in Virginia

February 15, WWBT 12 Richmond – (Virginia) 12 Investigates: 911 failure during storms. The Federal Communications Commission and the Virginia State Corporation
Commission blamed Verizon and the condition of equipment in their Virginia offices for the inability of roughly 2 million people to reach emergency services after a June
2012 storm.

https://www.nbc12.com/story/21202544/12-investigates-cell-phone-failureduring-storms

Yeah, it was pretty bad here. Thankfully, I didn't need to call 911 at that time. I've heard that the parts of my area that were affected had a lot to do with poor battery maintenance in their COs and remote equipment more than anything. They also had some generator failures due to the fact that were running out of fuel.

I could MAYBE understand running out of fuel with the widespread and extended power failures. Although a major service provider should have a disaster recovery / business continuity plan that never allows this type of outage to happen. However lack of maintenance? For a major carrier? That sounds crazy to me especially with a heavy reliance on 9-1-1.

I guess times are changing.

We often lose Verizon's land line service AND cell service on heavy calling holidays, like New Year. I understand the cell phone part, but land lines too? Obviously, every network can't be built to handle 100%+ calling surges, but the basic maintenance issues that affected 911 service are inexcusable.

Here in the Roanoke area last couple weeks Ive had 5 service calls with customers that couldnt be called or couldnt call out on all trunks. All Verizon,dont get much easier than that.Once reported, they usually had repaired quickly, in one case before I left job site.

Ed -

The telephone network was never designed to handle anything remotely close to 25% - much less 100%. When I built Voice Networks I spent a tremendous amount of time working on CCS (Call Centi Seconds) and Erlangs. There are 3600 seconds in an hour -so complete 100% service is 36 CCS. We pushed for a CCS of 6 or even 8 for high priority operations. NY Tel was happy with 2 - at least for residential.

A good way to see this is to remember how PBXs were configured: a cord board with 100 jacks would require 50 pairs of cords for total service. They usually had 14. NEC PBXs that I worked on (NEAX 12 or 22) had 120 lines in a Line Unit. There were only 24 channels connecting that LU to the PBXs internal network. Northern Telecoms SL -1 was even worse and continued to worsen as they went to Quad cards and higher. They also mixed Trunks and Lines in the same loop making for more blockage on the Trunk side.

My big GTE network switch (GTD-4600) had 64 lines in a Line Unit and had 24 channels to connect them to the internal network. Trunk units were non-blocking at 24 trunks:24 channels. But that switch was a real exception in the industry and it still had blocking (on the line side).

But you are absolutely correct that crappy (or non existent!) maintenance has adversely affected service these past few years. It was one thing to have blockages on New Year's Eve or Mother's Day. But now!

BTW. I don't know what it was like in the rest of the country after 9/11, but around here there was little or no service - of any sort- for weeks.

I was down at 33 Thomas Street on 9/12 and one of the AT&T engineers said that 50% of ALL international traffic was normally routed through the ATT switching centers in Lower Manhattan. All of which were out of service at that moment. He said we had two primary jobs to do: one was to get the stock exchange up and running and the other was to restore international dialing. He said with those two services down International commerce was almost at a standstill.

Sam

Verizon sold out to Fairpoint here in Maine and left them a mess to deal with. Shortly after they took over it was discovered that Verizon had not maintained any of their backup facilities. 911 centers were left with dead batteries and CO offices without generators. The whole infrastructure was neglected and is still be repaired/upgraded.

Just makes you wonder where all the money is going.

-Hal

Easy answer: Stockholders aka Fat Cats & Politicians