In one of our previous blog postings, we wrote about what we would feel if our Smartphone were either lost or stolen. Obviously, a feeling of paralysis would be the first emotion that would literally sink in.
The reason for this is that as a society has become so dependent upon it. The Smartphone, whether we realize it or not, has become an extension of both our personal and professional lives.
But now just imagine that you are using your Smartphone, and all of a sudden you lost connection to the Internet . . . the same feeling of paralysis would still set in. This was the trend last week on the West Coast, ranging from California all the way to Nevada.
According to the technicians from AT&T, the primary reasons for these increased spikes in outages were caused by 1) The detrimental weather; and 2) The aging telecommunications infrastructure which is present in those states. In fact, in some counties in those respective states, the increase in Internet outages went up as much as 350%.
But, as it was pointed out, the weather is a dynamic factor, and cannot be blamed entirely. Much of the blame has been associated with the old telecom infrastructure in these states. According to Keith Mitchell, a technician at AT&T: “For years, we’ve been telling AT&T executives about widespread infrastructure problems and saying the company needs to invest in the basic landline services our customers need before it’s too late . . . But AT&T chose to ignore us and the needs of our customers, and now the company is forcing us to work in dangerous conditions to clean up their avoidable mess.” (SOURCE: https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/at-t-techs-say-aging-california-nevada-infrastructure-raised-outages-following-recent).
However, the executives from AT&T have countered this claim by asserting that infrastructure upgrades are a priority. According to Marty Richter, a spokesperson at AT&T: “Our first priority is serving our customers and to that end, we invested more than $7.25 billion in our California wireless and wired networks in the past three years.” (SOURCE: https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/at-t-techs-say-aging-california-nevada-infrastructure-raised-outages-following-recent).
GeoTel Communications, LLC, provides fiber route maps that help businesses visualize telecom data and locate fiber for predictive analytics and location based intelligence. If interested in obtaining these datasets, call (800) 277-2172.
