Collocation Access

Mon Oct 23 17:01:11 UTC 2006

On Mon, 23 Oct 2006, Craig Holland wrote:
> Is this some new trend or have I just gotten lucky in the past?
> Wouldn't someone like AT&T be better served by giving their employees
> some company issued ID that they can submit to secure facilities?  I
> know it wouldn't be government issued, but would at least be a step in
> the right direction.  Or, they ask the unions to amend their policies
> considering it is a requirement of the job to do these kinds of installs
> to present a government ID.

Every AT&T employee on company business is issued an official company 
employee card with the employee's name and photograph.  Employees must
show the card while working on company business.

It is up to the co-location facility operator whether to accept the 
company issued ID card or not.  Although it varies by person, and 
sometimes the security guard is on a powertrip and the telephone
person will suddenly become stickler on the rules, the LECs and USPS tend 
to the most resististant to most landlord special rules.

I've heard similar complaints from government agents that some facilities
wouldn't accept their government issued law enfocement badge, and wanted 
to see their state issued driver's license or state ID card. Part of the 
problem is there are thousands of different official IDs, and minimum 
wage security guards can barely detect forgeries of common state ID cards 
and have no experience with credentials issued by other groups.  On the 
other hand, some state ID cards have a lot of the information someone 
could use for identity theft, and you don't always know what the guard or 
the facility will do with the information.

The US NSTAC group has been studying the issue of Trusted Access to 
telecommunications facilities, and whether we need a better method
to credential people for co-location access.

http://www.ncs.gov/nstac/reports/2005/Final%20TATF%20Report%2004-25-05.pdf