[EAS] Communication Services Down

[Bill Ruck]

Headline in San Francisco Chronicle, today, Saturday October 26, 2019:

"Nearly 11,500 customers in California were out of service -- cut off 
from telephone, television or internet access -- as of Friday morning 
during the outages and wildfires crippling the state, companies reported 
to the Federal Communications Commission."

The article ends with

"Some residents across the Bay Area also reported landlines out of 
service, a surprise to many who depended on them during outages for 
years.  That's because more companies are switching to internet voice 
technology that requires a powered network connection to make calls, 
unlike older phone networks that provide their own power and may stay on 
during blackouts."

So much for reverse 911.  Is this progress?

About one million more customers are expected to have their power shut 
off Sunday due to predicted high winds.  PG&E is running scared as the 
yuppie MBAs ran the utility into the ground with deferred maintenance.

On a related subject, got a robo call from PG&E last night and wrote 
down the 13 character code from the call.

I went on line to pgepsps.com and entered the code that I wrote down 
from the robocall.

Got this message:

We've encountered an error. Please try again.

Building more confidence in PG&E's ability, yeah, right.

Bill Ruck
Curmudgeon
San Francisco

P.S.  San Francisco makes its own electricity from Hetch Hetchy.  The 
city & county has already proposed to buy out PG&E but the utility 
turned them down.  But since their stock took another big drop after the 
word got out that they started Wednesday's fire at some point PG&E will 
be on their knees begging SF to bail them out.

But, I need to add, "Do you want your electricity to be as reliable as 
the MUNI?"