Ohio seems to be experiencing a statewide telephone outage due to an AT&T failure.
No local landlines are working to include 911, local, long distance and toll free calls.
Cellular to Cellular seems to be working.
Our City Government phone system uses other than AT&T for its phone lines however, even those aren't working. This I would assume is because the PSTN is all interconnected.
It's surprising though that my DSL is still working which is AT&T UVERSE since it all probably runs over the same lines. Using my Magic Jack phone I can get some long distace calls through but no local calling.
As such, I was instructed to run a continuous announcement on both the AM TIS and LPFM stations advising people of 2 cell phone numbers which ring into our Regional Police/Fire Dispatch Center.
Anyone else having phone problems?
We get a dial-tone on our land-line here near Ferguson, Missouri.
ATT OUTAGES
Recent reports mostly originate from: Akron, Canton, Kent, Cuyahoga Falls, Massillon, Tallmadge, Cleveland, Stow, Uniontown, and Barberton.
https://downdetector.com/status/att/map/
Latest news I've heard is a steam pipe burst at the Akron, Ohio phone office and is the cause of the outage.
They felt service would be restored by 9:00 pm but it's 10:30 pm now and still not working.
With all of the computerized switching, backup and redundant paths it's hard to believe one central office could knock down most of Northeast Ohio.
Back before cell phones a contractor cut through a trunk line in a 'burb of Cincy and killed the phone service for that community for an overnight. The amateur radio public service group I was affiliated with called for volunteers to help. We were give a flashing yellow light and a large cup of coffee and were deployed at intersections where we parked with the light flashing. A base station was established at police headquarters and the public was advised via radio and TV of our presence and that we were to relay emergency only traffic (messages) to the base.
The coffee was nice and the cup came in handy as dawn approached but I did not have to handle any traffic.
This, and other similar experiences, reminded me that utilities are fragile and redundancies are not as prevalent as we would hope.
Neil
Is Cayahoga Falls back on line?
Having backup services gets complicated.
KDX Worldround Radio plans to have backup transmitters for all of our frequencies, backup power, a backup building, backup vehicle and backup girl friend.