[31021] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Ameritech Service Quality Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeff Ogden)
Wed Sep 6 08:18:28 2000
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Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 08:15:52 -0400
To: nanog@merit.edu
From: Jeff Ogden <jogden@merit.edu>
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I agree that most of the noise in Michigan is about residential=20
repair times. Repair times for leased data circuits could always be=20
better, but don't seem to be nearly as bad as what people are=20
experiencing for residential repair. For leased data circuits repair=20
of previously installed and working circuits could be faster, but=20
doesn't usually take weeks. However, installs of new leased data=20
circuits is a different story. Delivery dates for new installs are=20
more or less meaningless and it can take weeks or months longer than=20
promised to get a new circuit installed. I agree that things get=20
worse as you start to move up to higher speed circuits. I agree that=20
waiting on hold to talk to someone about repairs is a big problem.=20
Coordination between IXCs and Ameritech also seems very poor at=20
times. As best we can tell the problems are not specific to Michigan=20
and seem to be occurring in all Ameritech states. These problems=20
aren't new, but have been building over a long period of time.
My real question is what can be done about this other than=20
complaining on this or similar lists? Are the PSCs in the states=20
served by Ameritech likely to take effective action? The Michigan PSC=20
is pretty weak and I am not too sure that they will be able to make=20
much of a difference. Is Ameritech likely to fix the problems on=20
their own given some time? Since Ameritech is now SBC, what is SBC's=20
track record in this area in other states? I've heard rumors from=20
other areas where SBC has purchased an ILEC that this sort of poor=20
service is pretty common, but this is only rumors.
One of the claims is that a large part of the problem is due to too=20
few staff and that in turn is due to the very tight national labor=20
market. If this is true, it would seem that these sorts of problems=20
would be occurring throughout the country and wouldn't be limited to=20
one region or one company. How does Ameritech compare to other LECs?
-Jeff Ogden
Merit
At 3:31 PM -0700 9/5/00, Steve Gibbard wrote:
>It's been about five months since I last dealt with Ameritech in Michigan,
>but prior to that I was dealing with them on a pretty much daily basis for
>a few years.
>
>I may be forgetting something, but I don't remember ever having a five day
>repair time on a previously working HiCap circuit. I had one that took
>two or three days once, involving what was apparrently a particularly
>nasty wet cable problem on some underground copper, but according to our
>customer Ameritech did have people out there working on it for much of the
>outage period. More often I'd wait on hold for an hour before finally
>talking to somebody who would open a ticket and have a tester call me back
>an hour or so later. Then, if it was an internal problem rather than
>something requiring a dispatch, they'd generally get it fixed pretty
>quickly. If it required a dispatch, they'd still generally be able to get
>somebody out to the site within a few hours. The hold times were never
>what I considered acceptable, and several circuits had the same problems
>multiple times, but it was nothing like what Sean's summary, or the first
>couple pages of that Ameritech report (I haven't read the rest yet), would
>seem to imply.
>
>Residential or small business repair is another story, and week lead
>times, before escallation, seemed pretty typical. With escallation, it
>was generally possible to get that down to two or three days, which could
>still be pretty bad.
>
>My impression is that most carriers promising four hour repair times are
>selling HiCap type stuff, where those lead times may be almost possible.
>
>-Steve
>
>On 3 Sep 2000, Sean Donelan wrote:
>
> >
> > The Michigan Public Service Commission has launched an investigation
> > into Ameritech's service quality. According to Ameritech, in August
> > the estimated average repair time will be 115 hours (almost 5 days).
> > Significantly up over previous years' average repair times of about
> > a day (25-28 hours).
> >
> > http://www.cis.state.mi.us/mpsc/comm/ameritech.htm
> >
> > What I find interesting isn't Ameritech's long repair times, but how
> > do providers promise 4 hour repair times when the dominant local loop
> > provider takes over a day to fix something on a good day.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------=20
>-----------
>Steve Gibbard scg@gibbard.org
