[EAS] Resolved- Nationwide AT&T Mobility 9-1-1 outage

[Alan Alsobrook]

On 3/10/2017 12:12 AM, Bill Ruck wrote:

> If the world wants to cut the wires so be it.  But don't expect your
> cell phone to be anywhere as reliable as the red and green wires that
> once was universal.  We can not have it both ways.  Either consider lack
> of cell coverage an inconvenience or mandate that the cell industry
> provides 100% area coverage 100% of the time.  Your local regulated
> telephone monopoly is held to a much higher reliability standard than
> cell carriers.

This used to be the case, but the old red and green wires are almost as 
likely to fail as the cell coverage. For many years now the Telco's have 
been moving dial tone out of the CO and originating it at RT's (remote 
terminals). The RT's have battery backup that's good for 6-12 hours if 
it's a new set of batteries. After that it goes down.

In the 2004 hurricane event, it was 5+ days before generators arrived 
for the RT's. For Matthew in 2016 for my area, for the most part com's 
stayed up during the storm, only to fail as things were starting to calm 
down. Cell phone, internet, wireline, cable, they all went down in the 
hours following the storm. Mind you, Matthew was really only a strong 
tropical storm on land.

So unless you have a confirmed POTS line that originates at the CO, 
chances are it's going to fail as well, perhaps not immediately, but 
give it a few hours and it'll join the rest of the service's in dead land.

-- 
Alan Alsobrook CSRE AMD
aalso at bellsouth.net