Spring 1999 NOC contact drill

Thu Apr 15 22:11:46 UTC 1999

On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, I Am Not An Isp wrote:

    > How does one become a member of the Call Before You Dig consortium?  A
    > quick web search found http://www.uncc.org/, but I'm not sure that's the
    > right thing, plus it doesn't tell me how to become a member.  (Okay, I only
    > looked at it a few minutes, so maybe it's in there, but it is not obvious.)
    > 
    > Anyway, maybe something like the ISP/C should join the Utility Notification
    > Center of Colorado (the URL I found)?  Does the UNCC have an e-mail
    > notification of big digs or something that could be posted to NANOG, or
    > prolly better have individual members subscribe to the list so we're
    > forewarned of potential outages?  Something like that.

Okay, so basically the deal was that there were a zillion (like 200)
different "call before you dig" hotlines for different areas, and you had
to track down the correct one, and there weren't a lot of penalties for
not having one for an area, et cetera.  Then in 1997, there was a federal
house bill to unify it all, it carried over to 1998, and then actually
passed around May or June sometime, as part of the Omnibus Federal
Transportation act.  The upshot of that is that there's one 888 number for
the whole country now, and states lose a portion of their federal highway
funds if they don't get the utilities which their PUCs regulate to
participate in the program.  

There isn't anything to "join" though, and it's a pull system rather than
a push system... They don't come and proactively tell you about all the
cables everywhere, you ask them about a specfic area.

This is all documented on the T-shirts that we were all wearing at the
NANOG right after it happened, last spring/summer.

                                -Bill