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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Cingular disruption in Washington DC
I don't think wireless carriers are required to report outages to the FCC yet, at least I haven't seen the report on the FCC web site. Cingular wireless service was disrupted for almost all wireline to wireless, wireless to wireline and voice mail service in the 301 and 202 area codes in Washington DC and surrounding areas. On Wednesday night, a tranformer connection failed, which may have been related to the heat wave in the area. Potomic Electric Power Company responded to the call from Cingular on Wednesday at 6pm, but found the building deserted and the gates locked. No other Potomic Power customers in the area had any problems. The PEPCO crew checked the utility transformer in the area, and found it working. Because there was no one at the site to let them in, the PEPCO crew left. The Cingular switch lost power at approximately 4am, approximately 10 hours later. I'm guessing when the batteries completely discharged. A cingular spokesperson said the system is designed to operate without outside power for up to a month, but the switch failed as the automated system tried to transfer from battery to generator power. A Department of Energy study found it experiences approximately 250 failures a year in emergency power systems at various DOE sites. NRIC reports have been showing an increasing trend in power problems in telephone facilities for several quarters. Would it be useful if ISPs contributed information about problems in their networks, so the industry could address any root-causes which may be affecting systems across providers?
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