An AT&T spokesman says yesterday’s data network outages across the U.S. were the result of the cut undersea cable in the Mediterranean that’s caused Internet and phone disruptions across Northern Africa, India and the Middle East. The cable will take 12-15 days to fix, although AT&T’s U.S. network was back up by the end of the day yesterday. [The Seattle Times]
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How exactly does a cable that carries internet service halfway around the world stop AT&T from serving customers in the US?
Wait, what? So, our phones in Iowa are depending on some single cable in the middle east? Cause, you know, that’s a SAFE place to store important things.
I remember when a cell phone outage was blamed on a hurricane that hit southern Florida.(Not sure which carrier my wife was using at the time, but I think it was SunCom or something like that) Odd thing was that we lived in Virginia at the time, and no other carriers were having problems in our area. We eventually realized they just had crappy service(Three outages with no cause in less than two weeks) and canceled with no ETF due to their problems.
Was this the same reason there was an AT&T Edge outage most of the day yesterday?
@Buran: Maybe they had to reroute traffic to peering in the US or something. Who knows.
@humphrmi: “Was this the same reason there was an AT&T Edge outage most of the day yesterday?”
An AT&T spokesman says yesterday’s data network outages across the U.S…”
Were you trying to be dumb there?
I demand a refund for the day my EDGE didn’t work (even though I didn’t use it)! I’m calling AT&T.
@aaron8301:
No I don’t think he is. The title on this page at the time of me writing this says yesterdays data network outage which was the edge network going down.
FTA: “Customers of AT&T, the biggest U.S. phone company, were affected by the disruption, spokesman Michael Coe said. He didn’t know how many customers were affected.”
That right there could mean that people travelling over seas could not get access to the AT&T network.
I would re-read the article and re-post this blog.
Our company has people working overseas, and their productivity has been severely hampered by this issue.
In all seriousness, how does one replace a cable on the bottom of the ocean? I’ve always wondered this…
all tech support people are in India. Lucky for me my DSL is working ok, at least it was last night.
@happy scrappy hero pup: They use a yellow submarine to get to it. Then call the AT&T underwater Dolphin repair crew.
@socalrob: Seconded. The article doesn’t say anything about Midwest outages. It is about outages in the Middle East, exclusively. Chris’s post/article summary is incorrect — I think he read the article a little too quickly. But in his defense, the wording in the last two paragraphs is fairly confusing.
@TPIRman:
True. It should also be mentioned that verizon had problems, but their networks didnt go out here. Or at least they weren’t reported.
The only way the cut cables could have caused a problem, is that the amount of traffic that got re-routed through the US flooded AT&T’s master routers, BUT. THAT IS NOT WHY AT&T had data issues ON THEIR CELLULAR NETWORK! SIX of the gateways that connect AT&T’s cellular packet data to the real internet went down. This statement is hogwash!
@shadow735:
See link and listen to the MP3 [www.slate.com]
That’s probably the best explanation I have heard to date. Sounds pretty complex and rather time consuming.
@Buran: I’m thinking AT&T probably buys band with from China err, something weird and pointless like that.
@gambles: lol I accidentally misspelled BANDWIDTH