Discussion point: Telco quality?

Sun Oct 11 08:03:28 UTC 1998

At 07:21 PM 10/8/98 -0400, Paul Ferguson wrote:
>This latest fiber cut just kind of jarred my brain into the
>realization of what "telco quality" services really boils down to.

Actually, telco quality is not a positive thing at all in my mind:

-  Circuits costing 40K/month take errors and are mysteriously "cleared
while testing"  or better yet, there's "no trouble found" and the errors go
away all by themselves.
-  MUX software upgrades that should have caused  "several 50ms hits",
takes out 10Mbps of bandwidth for 12 hours.
-  FOC dates that are more like guidlines.
-  Having LECs and IXCs that finger point at each other's legs of a circuit
when there's a problem.
-  Two words:  unmanned terminal.

And it's not limited to the data services...
-  Getting the infamous "all circuits are busy" or a fast busy when trying
to complete a call.
-  The static filled line that used to be clear until the PacBell truck
came a prowlin.

Considering about 97% of our data network outages are caused by the telcos,
I shudder when I hear that Lucent wants to make my data network as reliable
as the voice network.

I can only hope that the current trend of realistic SLAs makes it to the
carriers, instead of the current "well if it's down for a couple of days
_maybe_ we'll refund some money to you if you beat us up really bad."

</rant> :)

-Geoff

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Geoff Lisk                         Phone: 415-228-4170
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