AT&T is offering a $250,000 reward to anyone who can help them find out who maliciously cut a fiber line in California last week disrupting service on a large segment of the Internet. Today two lines were cut in Raleigh and Cary causing the entire NC Administrative Office of the Courts to go off-line and Magistrates in jails state wide could not determine how to set bail or look for outstanding warrants.
I’ve been in the center of an AT&T debacle for months. Our company has been trying to turn up an AT&T MPLS wide area network between our corporate locations since November. In the past I’ve coordinated wide area network deployments encompassing as many as 24 locations in under two weeks. None of these networks were carried by AT&T or Bellsouth. They can’t seem to get five locations done in under half a year. It’s making me look like an idiot for choosing them. I just hope the network is more reliable than their service or I’m in trouble.
To put this new AT&T network in place we’re tearing down a multi-site VPN (virtual private network) that has been in place for 5 years. It’s not the fastest in the world but rarely does a segment (location) go off-line. If I turn our broadband network over to AT&T and they have these kinds of issues then we lose money. That’s unacceptable. So far their technical communication through the process has been horrible. The AT&T Techs want someone on site but can’t specify a time, the average turn around time for emails and phone calls to the Engineers is at best three days but most often two weeks or when I complain to AT&T executive account management.
I’m having buyers remorse for signing with these guys and they haven’t even finished turning on the service yet. Come to think of it that’s part of the reason why I’m having buyers remorse. Ma Bell is back, bigger and more unreliable than ever.