North American Network Operators Group

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WSJ: Trade Center Attack Highlights Problem

  • From: Sean Donelan
  • Date: Thu Oct 18 23:56:33 2001

Tommorrow's edition (Oct 19) of the Wall Street Journal
has yet another article about Verizon's 140 West Street
office.

  "Others say the extensive damage to Verizon's hub demonstrated that it
  is dangerous to rely on one company. They point out that only with the
  help of smaller competitors did parts of New York get their dial tones
  back.

  "We have buildings that would have been waiting for Verizon to get the
  service up if there were not alternatives," says Agostino Cangemi, the
  New York City commissioner in charge of telecom franchising

One interesting thing I found during my research since September 11
is the Internet held up well because of its extensive use of alternate
providers.  Verizon tends to be very expensive, so ISPs needing lots
of "cheap" bandwidth purchased service from a variety of competitors.
Much of this was not planned, nor did ISPs have a clue where their
circuits ran.  It just happened due to Adam Smith's invisible hand.

That's not to say CLECs didn't have problems.  AT&T/TCG was walloped
hard, and several ISPs have essentially abandoned some TCG facilities
because they won't be repaired for a long time.  MFN lost a huge
amount of fiber.  Worldcom won't say how bad MFS/Brooks/etc was hit
but Worldcom customers report their circuits were out for 3-4 weeks
and may not be repaired until the end of the year.