Telephones Out US West Coast?

[Armond Perretta]

This morning my NextAlarm service was out for about 6 or 7 hours. Neither
my alarm nor my regular service could get through. Later they came back up
with the story that telephone and Internet service was disrupted on the West
Coast and that the outage was beyond their control.

This sounds like nonsense. First, the "Internet" cannot be "out" in any
particular region. It's just doesn't function like that. Second, I cannot
find a single mention of a disruption of telephone service in the US for
this morning.

 

[Crash Gordon]

NextAlarm has no backup contingency? tsk tsk.


| Verizon had a huge outage this morning affecting incoming calls South of
| Los Angeles from around 2:30am to somehwere around 11:30am, 911 service
| was also out in the affected areas. I think area code 562 was the
| hardest hit with some 714 & 310 codes also affected.
|
| Doug L
|
| Armond Perretta wrote:
| > This morning my NextAlarm service was out for about 6 or 7 hours.
Neither
| > my alarm nor my regular service could get through. Later they came back
up
| > with the story that telephone and Internet service was disrupted on the
West
| > Coast and that the outage was beyond their control.
| >
| > This sounds like nonsense. First, the "Internet" cannot be "out" in any
| > particular region. It's just doesn't function like that. Second, I
cannot
| > find a single mention of a disruption of telephone service in the US for
| > this morning.
| >
|

 

[Mark Leuck]

This morning my NextAlarm service was out for about 6 or 7 hours. Neither
my alarm nor my regular service could get through. Later they came back up
with the story that telephone and Internet service was disrupted on the West
Coast and that the outage was beyond their control.

This sounds like nonsense. First, the "Internet" cannot be "out" in any
particular region. It's just doesn't function like that. Second, I cannot
find a single mention of a disruption of telephone service in the US for
this morning.

Actually it DOES function like that sometimes in fact a week ago a couple of
ISP/VOIP providers blocked access to various parts of the net for certain
areas of the country due to a billing dispute.

 

[Nomen Nescio]

Crash Gordon said:

NextAlarm has no backup contingency? tsk tsk.

All right, I'll bite: if your local phone company (or LD provider) has a
massive outage, how exactly do you have a backup for your digital
receivers? Sure, people can pay extra for radio or whatever, but what do
you do for the people who only have a dialer if your receiver lines are
down?

- badenov

 

[Armond Perretta]

This morning my NextAlarm service was out for about 6 or 7 hours.
... Later they came back up with the story that telephone and Internet
service was disrupted on the West Coast and that the outage was beyond
their control.

... the "Internet" cannot be "out" in
any particular region ... [and] ... I cannot find a single mention of a
disruption of telephone service in the US for this morning.

Actually it DOES function like that sometimes in fact a week ago a
couple of ISP/VOIP providers blocked access to various parts of the
net for certain areas of the country due to a billing dispute.

With NextAlarm I don't think this was the case. The underlying network
simply re-routes around faulty servers. From what others have said there
could easily have been a phone outage in NextAlarm's area, but seem to
suggest that their VoIP and related services were also down for reasons
beyond their control. Maybe, but ...

I am going to try for a fuller explanation from NextAlarm. I have had the
service since Jan 2005, and have had no issues. Of course I have also had
no incidents at my home that might have provided a real test. I am not
quite comfortable with how this particular problem was handled.

 

[G. Morgan]

Subject: Re: Telephones Out US West Coast?
Newsgroup: alt.security.alarms

All right, I'll bite: if your local phone company (or LD provider) has a
massive outage, how exactly do you have a backup for your digital
receivers? Sure, people can pay extra for radio or whatever, but what do
you do for the people who only have a dialer if your receiver lines are
down?

Doesn't big blue have the ability to re-route the toll-free dialer numbers to
other central's?

 

[Frank Olson]

I am going to try for a fuller explanation from NextAlarm. I have had the
service since Jan 2005, and have had no issues. Of course I have also had
no incidents at my home that might have provided a real test. I am not
quite comfortable with how this particular problem was handled.

Nor should you be. While nothing happened to you, another customer may not
have faired quite so well...

 

[Mark Leuck]

Subject: Re: Telephones Out US West Coast?
Newsgroup: alt.security.alarms



Doesn't big blue have the ability to re-route the toll-free dialer numbers to
other central's?

Yes assuming they have contracted with another company to do backup

 

[Mark Leuck]

This morning my NextAlarm service was out for about 6 or 7 hours.
... Later they came back up with the story that telephone and Internet
service was disrupted on the West Coast and that the outage was beyond
their control.

... the "Internet" cannot be "out" in
any particular region ... [and] ... I cannot find a single mention of a
disruption of telephone service in the US for this morning.

Actually it DOES function like that sometimes in fact a week ago a
couple of ISP/VOIP providers blocked access to various parts of the
net for certain areas of the country due to a billing dispute.

With NextAlarm I don't think this was the case. The underlying network
simply re-routes around faulty servers.

Not always, while the internet sends packets all over the net to it's
destination they still can be affected by an outage in a certain area. That
said however it could indeed be NextAlarm.

An example of an internet outage can be found here..

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=82346&WT.svl=news1_1

These 2 companies have been squabbling for a couple of weeks now and that
has caused outages in specific areas

From what others have said there
could easily have been a phone outage in NextAlarm's area, but seem to
suggest that their VoIP and related services were also down for reasons
beyond their control. Maybe, but ...

You might want to visit http://www.dslreports.com/

They have countless users having VOIP problems, it's not yet as reliable as
a standard phone line and if it was the VOIP provider that had a problem
it's not NextAlarm's fault.

BTW: By looking at that panel on https://nextalarm.com/index.jsp it appears
to be a slightly altered Visonic PowerMax which is a standard alarm panel.

 

[Nick Markowitz]

We had a contractor take out 3 fiber optic and a 1000 pair coper cable here
in pennhils and has taken phone service out to plum monrovile and penn hills
and it happened satuday and phoneswill notbe fully restored till friday

--
Nick Markowitz Jr.
Owner
Markowitz Electric Protection
Private Industry Fire Investigator.
Qualified Electrical- Fire Alarm Contractor

Contributing Editor Pa. Firemans Magazine
Staff Editor www.securitymission.com
Senior Correspondant www.1strespondernews.com
Senior Affilliate www.nbfd.us
Contributor www.monyoughfire.com
Contract Broadcast Engineer WAVL 910 AM apollo Pa.

"To error is human to realy foul things up requires a computer"

Irish Diplomacy

The ability to tell a man to go to hell and he tells you how much he is
looking forward to taking the trip.

 

[Kevin]

My Question is: If you were operating a CS And you did have a Backup
Scenario. For Instance Forwarding all your calls to another CS. How would
you forward those calls if The entire network in the area was down? If the
switching equipment is inoperative at the CO, How would they forward your
calls????

 

[Jen...tel]

Hey Armond, since next alarm does not monitor alarms, what would an
outage have to do with them? Since your alarm is being monitored
elsewhere, would the CA outage lets say, stop a call to New Jersey? Do
you even know who's monitoring your alarm and where or did you just
fall for a sales pitch without checking? Oh I forgot, it's everyone
else fault and not the customer, they don't need to be responsible for
nothing.

 

[Armond Perretta]

Hey Armond, since next alarm does not monitor alarms, what would an
outage have to do with them? Since your alarm is being monitored
elsewhere, would the CA outage lets say, stop a call to New Jersey?
Do you even know who's monitoring your alarm and where or did you just
fall for a sales pitch without checking? Oh I forgot, it's everyone
else fault and not the customer, they don't need to be responsible for
nothing.

If you can figure out how to ask a serious question, I promise I'll consider
responding.

 

[Jen...tel]

Get off it, you know exactly what I'm asking!

You just don't know the answer, do you?

Bet you really though next alarm was an alarm monitoring company with
dispatchers and all.

 

[Mark Leuck]

My Question is: If you were operating a CS And you did have a Backup
Scenario. For Instance Forwarding all your calls to another CS. How would
you forward those calls if The entire network in the area was down? If the
switching equipment is inoperative at the CO, How would they forward your
calls????

It would be forwarded by the telco not the CS

 

[Nomen Nescio]

Mark Leuck said:

It would be forwarded by the telco not the CS

I think you're missing the point. If the telco has experienced this kind
of major outage, then:

(a) How are you going to get in touch with the right people at your local
telco to make the arrangements? Carrier pigeon?

(b) Assuming the problem is massive enough to wipe out phone service to a
large area, why would you expect the telco to be able to honor your request
to forward calls?

- badenov