System Break Down
We got an unexpected rain storm in West Sacramento yesterday. It promptly caused power outages and the cable television system to break down. Speaking of breaking down, I am amazed with the difference between the voice and data networks the telephone company maintains. Here in SBC land, an outage to the voice network of several hours, whether wireless or wireline would be completely unacceptable, yet a data network they maintain goes down frequently without explanation or apology.
The public switched telephone network has always measured outages in minutes or seconds per year, yet with SBC's DSL network, well, the system goes off line for hours at a time.Why don't they have backup procedures installed for this service? Like redundant servers and routers? I understand other telcos across the country have similar problems. It's odd that as we march into the new century, with better and better technologies, that the quality of the telco networks is decreasing, not increasing.
I'm not sure what this will mean in the future, as services and businesses become more and more dependent on the internet and data com. Will we have to provide a backup system ourselves? So that if Pac Bell goes off line I connect to a cable modem, satellite, or other wireless service to keep my business on the net? This hasn't been needed in the past but I can see where it might be needed in the future. How odd.