Comments on: AT&T uses Twitter during service outage

Twitter is going mainstream and companies, such as AT&T, are using it to communicate with customers during crises, like the service outage in Silicon Valley.

[ZBeeb]

Not to be negative here, Twittering is a good idea and all.. but in this case a touch of reality is appropriate...

There's no Broadband, there's no Telephone and there's no Cell phone for subscribers south of San Jose.. Morgan Hill, Gilroy, parts of Santa Cruz County... No broadband + no cell phone = no way for these subscribers to see the Tweets. OK, I'll admit some of these users get their internet from Comcast as it's not clear how or if cable service was impacted (of course they aggregate their data and end it off over fiber leased from AT&T too, so they may have been impacted)... so some people may have had access...

In this case Twitter was a good way for AT&T to communicate to the media rather than to their subscribers, who generally speaking had no access to Twitter.

Worse than no Twitter how about no 911... what are you going to do if you need help and you call 911 but no-one's home. So far it's been 16 hours since these areas with tens of thousands of people have had access to 911 - yes the Police, Fire and Ambulance services have done a great job of spreading themselves around the affected areas and making themselves more visible during this situation... but people could die as a result of this vandalism

[timber2005]

Some sort of communication is better than nothing.

[Austin_Mike]

This is the second major outage of an AT&T fiber connection. About two months ago someone supposedly cut an AT&T fiber cable in N. Texas outside of Dallas -- this killed all AT&T wireless data service for pretty much every major city in Texas (D/FW, Houston, Austin, San Antonio).

I'm not a conspiracy person in the least, so I don't think the two are linked. But I think that AT&T needs to start laying some redundant fiber runs in different locations if they want to be taken seriously. Otherwise some other company will pop-up (maybe Verizon nationwide finally?) and offer better uptime guarantees and service. AT&T better get their stuff together, and soon.

[UpajOs]

I agree with Austin_Mike that we need redundant fibers to reduce the chances of such outages again. However, there's no way that this latest incident in the San Francisco Bay Area could NOT have been a conspiracy. We're talking about entrance into half a dozen manholes in a very short amount of time in two locations about 30 miles apart. Out of hundredsds of manholes in the city, the perpetrators knew exactly where the cables were located that, when cut, would cause the maximum amount of damage! If this is ever unraveled by law enforcement authorities, I'd wager that at least four individuals were involved, and they are/were employees of AT&T or one of the major telecommunications companies that lease cable from AT&T.

[TelecomPhil]

No, no, no.

Its the iPhone users who just received there monthly bill!

Kidding aside, it was most likely a construction company without any knowledge of "Call Before You Dig"!

[jg_comment]

In real estate the rule is location, location, location.
In telecommunication & networking it's redundancy, redundancy, redundancy...looks like they need to add more redundancy. I would have thought there would have been a backup if this cable ever failed since it carried so much traffic, how did this ever get approved or was the failure that well planned?

[n3td3v]

The cyber terrorists are out to get the fiber!

[celticbrewer]

If they weren't before- they probably are now; especially after seeing how easy and effective it is. Are these the same terrorists who cut the ocean lines around the Med sea and India last year? Or are they still sticking to the "boat anchor" story?

[TelecomPhil]

AT&T uses Twitter during service outage.

HOW?

No phone

No cell phone

No Internet

Cable is cut!

So how IS AT&T keeping customers informed?

Mental Telepathy?
Just B.S!

[UpajOs]

If they were using Twitter, they were preaching to the choir. There's no way anyone in Morgan Hill or Gilroy was receiving their "tweets".

[celticbrewer]

If the local radio and tv stations got it, they could relay the info (over the air or Sat tv, and radio). At the very least, they could drive the info to those stations to give them the story.

'makes me wonder where my old CB radio is.

[Randys2cents]

IMHO,
they need to set up a system in which telco security is
informed when someone enters a manhole?

[LauraB706]

Our biggest concern today was no 911 or other emergency communications :

I live in Gilroy, approx 25 miles south of San Jose. No tele, internet, cell communications. The police department personally visited every Gilroy bank, recommending their closure. At my bank in the morning, there was a large crowd outside. For security purposes, the bank only allowed 2 customers inside at a time, and the bank could only do limited transactions.
The bank was concerned that if a problem arose, they would not be able to contact the police since both the landlines and cell phones were inoperable. So by early afternoon, they closed down completely.
BestBuy in Gilroy closed today. Rumor had it, Costco did the same. So many people pay by credit card, and the POS terminals wouldn't work.
Other businesses closed, for security purposes - no landline & no cell means no security.
My boss was concerned that if someone broke in after hours, the police wouldn't be notified.
My friend picked up her daughter (junior high) immediately after school, since the daughter & her daughter's friends cell phones weren't working. Again, security measure.
Very spookie day today, in south county. Makes you look at things a little differently. The things we take for granted.

[stubbyns]

What a terrible twituation :(

[johnqh]

Simply, landline, wireless, and internet should use different fiber backbones, so all of them do not go down and the same time.

By the way, if you think this is bad, imagine your internet doesn't work for a whole month! This happened at least three times over the last 10 years to Asian countries (not a city, not a country, but countries) when the trans-pacific cable get cut. Japan, China, Taiwan, HK, etc couldn't get access to the portion of internet hosted in US (they still can see local sites) for about a month each time.

[cwflaherty]

I know I'm late to the post here, but the first line of the article is priceless: "Want to find out why you suddenly don't have Internet access or cell phone service? You might want to check out the social-networking site Twitter." - yeah - maybe you should use your cell phone that has no service to call someone too.

How ridiculous is this statement? I'm mean really!?!

[karen-mobile]

Good job twitter was there to bail them out! How bizarre that they had to rely on Twitter to reach their customers, slightly embarrassing for them!
[url=http://mobilephones.name]Karen[/url]