BT network outage

Wed Nov 21 23:17:45 UTC 2001

> The joy of single provider service.  British Telecom lost most
> of its national IP backbone on Tuesday affecting DSL and Dialup
> service across multiple ISPs in the UK.  According to news
> reports, this affected almost all DSL service in the UK.
> 
> What happened to BT?  Is this a unique "feature" of the UK marketplace
> or can the same thing happen in the USA?

No one will ever know but I'd guess it was self inflicted, it didn't
affect all providers though, my partner has DSL via one provider
that was not affected, I've got DSL though another provider
and that was affected [although the DSL boxes are less than 10 feet
apart and go into the same exchange!]

The issue in the UK around BT's ownership of the loop will never end
as long as we have a government and more importantly a regulator 
that continues to think that "BT knows best".

Regards,
Neil.