After reading a couple of horror stories about Verizon’s response to Hurricane Irene, I’d thought that I would say something nice about AT&T.

I had several sites with POTS lines down, and AT&T repair immediately forwarded the calls off-site. No big deal, they do it every day.

I had five offices with PRI and no CLAR. Despite being warned, the managers said no. With power (and phones) out, and an estimate of 5 days for restoration, management changed their minds.

A couple of phone calls and emails later, I had my CLAR in about an hour. Yep, one hour.

Still not real happy about them screwing up the last couple of orders for POTS lines, but I have to say that AT&T really came through this time.

....all I can say is we are working like crazy trying to do what we can to keep things running, nice to hear its appricated.

That's great to hear. The folks who are behind the scenes (who actually do the work) rarely get the recognition that they deserve. The front-end jockeys hardly let anything through to even get a shot at getting fixed.

I do have to ask though: What in the heck is "CLAR"? I've never heard of that acronym before.

Customer Location Alternate Routing.

It allows you to reroute your calls, either manually or by time of day / day of week. Since KN1 or RS1 numbers can’t easily be forwarded, CLAR is a great solution for disaster routing, but I know of sites that use it on a daily basis.

Dial in from any phone, enter your PIN and follow the DTMF prompts – your calls are forwarded to a pre-determined number. Very useful for power failures, circuit outages or when the PBX goes belly up.

Ed its also knows as AERS, automatic emergency route selection

In AT&T LEC land (not Legacy T...more like Legacy S), is this the same as Enhanced Alternate Routing, or do they have another feature specific to Emergency Routing?

Justin

CLAR is also German for "clear". I'm also surprised and happy that AT&T can still pull a rainbow out.

Here's a quick blurb about AERS, aka CLAR:

https://www.ct.gov/doit/lib/doit/purchase/telecom/ps_att_local_pri_aers_web.pdf