"This has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with Y2K," AT&T's Dave Johnson says.

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

Me thinks the lady doth protest too much! This is from USA Today, but is probably in your hometown paper as well:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/ndssun04.htm

New Y2K worry: Jammed phones By Shawn Young, USA TODAY

Phone companies across the USA say their biggest Y2K worry for the upcoming millennium weekend is psychology, not technology.

The fear is that millions will jam circuits by trying to call friends and relatives at midnight or by checking whether their phones still work.

"We're telling people, 'Don't feel that you have to pick up the phone at midnight and see if you have a dial tone, because if everyone does that at the same time, you probably won't. And if you don't have it, don't assume that something is wrong,' " says Russ Robinson of Sprint.

If you don't get a dial tone on New Year's, chances are your local phone network is swamped, not broken.

BellSouth's main worry is that congestion could keep emergency calls from getting through. It is running radio ads asking people to pace their "Happy New Year" calls, spokesman Clay Owen says.

"You're just waiting in line for a dial tone," he says. If network congestion becomes a safety issue, BellSouth says it will take to the airwaves to issue instructions.

"We are asking people not to pick up the phone at 12:01. People may not know that just picking up the phone puts them in the congestion," Jason Hillery of SBC Communications says.

"This has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with Y2K," AT&T's Dave Johnson says.

In fact, phone companies say their networks are fully prepared for the rollover.

Phone companies say their busiest days typically are Mother's Day and the Monday after Thanksgiving.

It will help that the New Year's holiday falls on a weekend, when business use is low, experts say.

"My advice to the consumer is, if you pick up the phone and it doesn't work, I wouldn't be too surprised," says Boyd Peterson of Yankee Group, a consulting firm.

"If it's Jan. 4 and it doesn't work, I'd be worried."

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-- Hokie (nn@va.com), December 27, 1999

Answers

If I were still consulting on spin meistering to big firms like ATT I'd be telling them to put out all the after-burners for any possible excuse for a problem and really lay it on thick as a potential problem so that it can be used as a cover to hold off against early Y2K disruptions... It's a strategy we'd employ to take the heat off of any thing. Make em look elsewhere first and really get them to stare at anything else but our actual problem. This is no different.

-- R.C. (racambab@mailcity.com), December 27, 1999.

Ok, I'll give everyone a few hours to call their mommies and say happy new year. But if I'm still getting a busy signal by 5:00 am, that's it... I'm going to know that it has to be a Y2K problem. Then I'm going to go completely beserk, and they'll have to send out the National Guard to keep me from destroying the world. After all, if we can't make phone calls, we'd be better off dead! :-)

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), December 27, 1999.

R.C., sounds kinda like focusing on terrorism against the infrastructure prior to rollover, huh?

-- Hokie (nn@va.com), December 27, 1999.

This is a merely a reinforcement of an idea that began circulating successfully early this autumn. (I fondly think of it as the "Dead Phone Explanation" meme. It's the moment's equivalent of "Planes Won't Fall from the Sky.") Just another thread in the fabrication of the "It's all a behavior management fault;nothing to do with computers" story. At our company's management meeting, the ONLY Y2K advice offered to managers was not to pick up the phone at the arrival of the New Year so that you don't cause a system crash. We, like many other companies, are asking managers to wait until 1 a.m. to report any problems. (Laugh or cry at that?)

-- Faith Weaver (suzsolutions@yahoo.com), December 27, 1999.

Geez Hawk you are just way tooooooooo funny.

The more I hear this crap the more it sounds like the phones aren't going to work.

Even the polly's should admit that this sounds like spin. The reports seem to indicate that people don't care about having extra cash or food. Why on earth would they want to know if the phone works?

If they would just leave it alone, most of the sheeple would be asleep but at the rate their going the whole friggin country is going to stay up and try out their phones!!!!

-- the Virginian (1@1.com), December 27, 1999.



Thank you Virginian, you said it better than I could.

The first thing I wonder when someone says "Don't panic!" is "Why are they saying this? Is there reason to panic?"

Yep, their people who are supposed to have their fingers on the pulse of the American people must not have noticed there IS no pulse. So no need for all these "warnings".

-- preparing (preparing@home.com), December 27, 1999.


"If it's Jan. 4 and it doesn't work, I'd be worried."

So, If the phones aren't working on Jan 1, 2 and 3, it isn't Y2K-related and we shouldn't be worried. After all, it's just a 3 day storm.

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), December 27, 1999.


How can everyone simply picking up the phone to see if there is a dial tone crash the system? I could understand it if everyone tried to make a call at the same time, but that is not what the bells are warning against. It is just simply ridiculous to expect everyone to pick up and listen for a dial tone at the same time. We are talking time zones. Can't happen.

If someone with real understanding of the matter could post an answer, that would be great.

-- OR (orwelliator@biosys.net), December 27, 1999.


When telephone switching centers are engineered, it is assumed that only one in every eight or ten customers will come off hook to make a call at any given time. If four out of every ten customers picks up the phone at the same moment, someone out of the group is going to listen to dead air until equipment becomes available to handle the excess volumne of call attempts.

Several years ago, Garth Brooks concert tickets went on sale in the bay area, and so many people called in at the same time to order tickets they caused the toll network in Northern California to crash. We have an indenpendent telephone company and experienced many customer complaints before AT&T was able to restore service.

-- Sharon L (sharonl@volcano.net), December 27, 1999.


R.C. - "If I were still consulting on spin meistering to big firms like ATT I'd be telling them to put out all the after-burners for any possible excuse for a problem and really lay it on thick as a potential problem so that it can be used as a cover..."

Hey.. maybe they can make a bid on the services of that once-played-a- chaplain-on-TV sermon writer the ABA used? Or they can tap the banking official from England who warned of solar flares. But really, terrorism seems the hot cover of the moment. Maybe they can get those hackers with the bags over their heads to do an encore and warn about what mean-n-nasties they could do to the phone system. I'm sure their numbers are all in the Rendon Group's files. Wonder what spin- meistering pays now-a-days? Do you suppose it is more than code remediation? Or embedded systems work?

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), December 27, 1999.



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