North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: AT&T Switch operational in basement of WTC
On another list someone posted: "I'm being told by friends that this story is false--it's been circulating, but once real live AT&T people were consulted, they said their equipment failed due to flooding shortly after the collapse. The press may be shortcutting on story confirmations..." SRC Randy Neals wrote: > > Seems almost too good to be true... Does anyone know any more about this? > > AT&T's switch in the basement apparently operated after the collapse until > 4PM. > They expect to recover the switch hardware.... > > Hmmmm... > > So if you can build a switch room that doesn't collapse when 2 x 110 story > buildings fall on it, why not get those engineers to design the building so > it doesn't collapse in the first place? > > -R > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- > Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom > > AT&T equipment survived trade center collapse > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > > PHILADELPHIA, Sept 12 (Reuters) - AT&T Corp. (NYSE:T - news), the No. 1 U.S. > > long-distance telephone and cable television company, said its > communications > network carried a flood of heavy calling volume on Wednesday, but remained > unharmed after its equipment survived the collapse of the World Trade > Center. > > Calling volume on "the network is running about about 20 percent above a > typical Wednesday morning," AT&T spokesman Dave Johnson said. "There's > heavy inbound surge to the New York and Washington areas and some > network congestion, but nothing like yesterday." > > AT&T handles about 300 million voice telephone calls a day. It carried 431 > million calls on Tuesday as customers flooded the telephone lines in the > wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, making it the > heaviest business day in the company's network history, Johnson said. > > AT&T's local network switching equipment, which routes telephone calls, was > located in the basement of the World Trade Center towers and survived the > implosion of the buildings, Johnson said. > > "It appears the equipment has survived ... It was up and alive and still > providing dial tone by 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon. Once the back-up > batteries ran out, we took them offline, but the equipment is still > working," > Johnson said. > > "We were amazed," he said. "It was several stories under ground and all I > can say is that they must have built up that basement very sturdy.'' > > The switching equipment handled calls for AT&T business customers in Lower > Manhattan. The company rerouted calls and suffered no network outages, > Johnson said. > > AT&T will retrieve the equipment once it gets approval from New York City > and disaster teams to approach the rubble of the World Trade Center. The > New York-based company said none of its employees were injured or killed in > the attacks. -- ======================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata "@" virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration ** =========================================================================
|