BT strike could affect internet and phone connections

Thu May 27 16:11:59 UTC 2010

On 5/27/2010 10:48, Tim Franklin wrote:
>> Internet and phone connections across Britain could go into meltdown
>> as BT workers threaten their first national strike for 23 years...
>>
>> â€˜Many business and residential phonelines could go out of action, and
>> if broadband crashes then thousands and thousands of people will find
>> their internet goes down.â€™
>>
>> http://www.metro.co.uk/news/828021-threat-of-bt-strike-could-affect-internet-and-phone-connections
> 
> I get a lovely vision from that of a real old-style manual switchboard
> operator, frantically plugging internet connections together with patch
> cords as each SYN packet rings a little bell.
> 
> Clearly BT engineers being on strike will stop broken things from
> being fixed[0].  I'm very unclear how it will cause things that are
> working today to suddenly "go into meltdown"...

In between the cord board and today, then the switchmen or repeatermen
went on strike, they pulled down all the patch cords and make-busy plugs
to put all the broken equipment back into service.

For the first few hours all we did was reshoot troubles that should have
been repaired long before but were "too hard".

One of the engineers discovered that a lot of stuff in the Master Test
Frame was broken, mis-wired, etc, with lots of workarounds in use.

We made it all right, including ensuring that the workarounds wouldn't
work any more.  (Since we left the place with nothing broken, we figured
the "managers" would have enough time to train and enforce procedures
before customers noticed.  Much.)

> [0] As a residential customer, it's arguable how much of a change this is.

One small step will take out our residential telephone, TV cable, and
Internet Access in one swell foop.

[I wonder if we had a dry run last night....everything (including the
provider's telephone when called from a cell phone) were out for about a
1/2 hour last evening.  Eggs and baskets.]
-- 
Somebody should have said:
A democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.

Freedom under a constitutional republic is a well armed lamb contesting
the vote.

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