[ale] Miracles can happen! Really!

[James P. Kinney III]

On Tue, 2005-05-10 at 20:04 -0400, Sean Kilpatrick wrote:
> Some background data:
> For several years my wife and I have maintained a second
> phone line (ringers turned off/ always answered by a machine)
> solely for the use of her mother and her caregivers.
> Several weeks ago her mother died in her sleep at the nursing
> home in Gaithersburg, Md. We went up to Maryland and dealt with the
> usual things. When we got back to Atlanta, we called Bell South
> and asked to have the second line disconnected.
> Sunday night the line went dead. Sometime around 9 am Monday
> (that's yesterday) our DSL connection died. Turns out that the DSL
> line had been connected to the second line!
> Oops!
> Along about two o'clock I finally figured out what had happened
> and worked with tech support at Speakeasy to start the process
> (working through Covad) to get our DSL connection moved to the
> remaining line.
> 
> By 10 am this morning the link light on the DSL bridge box had
> turned on and we were back on line. That's less than 20 hours.
> When was the last time Bell South did ANYTHING in less than 20
> hours?
> 
> I'm still stunned.

You should be!! I have a client who was getting Speakeasy DSL to replace
Earthlink in their office. The office has been in the same suite for
over 20 years. Covad provisioned the line and I connected the DSL modem.
No sync. I pulled out my o'scope. No high frequency anything (well,
there was the usual pops and groans on POTS line). Called Speakeasy.
Techs worked with me for a long time and concluded that the DSL
provisioning was not correct. They called BS to "find the line". BS
griped about it as they were already done. BS comes out and shows there
is indeed dial tone on the line. That tech knew nothing about DSL. Covad
came out in about an hour and confirmed no DSL on the line and also
called BS. Covad produced a provisioning chart showing a circuit ID. BS
announced that circuit was good and there was DSL signal. There wasn't.
At this point another 3 days had passed with BS claiming the line was
good. Finally, BS sends out a tech who (!!) confirms there is no DSL
signal. He calls a tech in the switching center to check a circuit ID
for him. Remote tech calls back in 2 hours since he had to drive about
20 miles to the switching station where that circuit ID was housed. This
is 20 miles AWAY from the office we were in! The circuit has DSL. But it
is terminated at a different address. Someone else got the DSL service.

The same address BS claimed the entire office was located when the
original service order came over. The database was wrong about the
service address and had located the circuits in the wrong county. Covad
provisioned the DSL on the ID supplied by BS. 

So BS tech is standing in the office and plugs in a toner to the phone
pair that is _supposed_ to have the new DSL and leaves for the switch.
He comes back (in a FOUL mood) the _next_ day having found the correct
pair in the switch (it took 11 hours of tone probes since the switch was
also labeled wrong:) and finally got the DSL on the correct pair.

Total time 6.5 days. BS never admitted their mistake but they did give a
credit to my client for 1 months phone service (6 lines at business
rates) to compensate for my bill. 

I forgot to mention that the beginning of this process took over a month
as BS kept sending phone records to Speakeasy that were just garbage.
Things like wrong service address, wrong phone numbers, incorrect data
in nearly field.
> 
> Sean
> 
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> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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