At 1pm, MCI WorldCom had all MFS service restored that was in or passed
through White Plains. It turns out it wasn't a fiber cut.
The building they are located in (One North Broadway, which in addition to
being a regular office tower includes POPs for pre-WorldCom MCI, MFS,
and seemingly Nextel) was having electrical work performed by the building
management. They had to shut down the entire building's power to get this
work done. I stopped by at 12pm, and the building's security guards said
management notified tenants last month they they would have no electricity
on 10/9.
At 7 or 8am the power went off, and the MFS batteries failed at 9am. It
took four hours to get power back on. I guess they thought it was a fiber
cut since the whole area simply went dark. At around 11am, they
determined there was no electricity, and that the fiber was probably
unhurt.
Our C&W Internet service, which passes through the pre-WorldCom MCI POP in
the same building, was unaffected. So either that facility has better
batteries, or they did something to make sure that things would keep
running today.
Scott Drassinower wrote:
At 1pm, MCI WorldCom had all MFS service restored that was in or passed
through White Plains. It turns out it wasn't a fiber cut.
The building they are located in (One North Broadway, which in addition to
being a regular office tower includes POPs for pre-WorldCom MCI, MFS,
and seemingly Nextel) was having electrical work performed by the building
management. They had to shut down the entire building's power to get this
work done. I stopped by at 12pm, and the building's security guards said
management notified tenants last month they they would have no electricity
on 10/9.
At 7 or 8am the power went off, and the MFS batteries failed at 9am.
There's this neat device called a generator... Guess MCI Worldcom never
heard of 'em... Gotta wonder what they do during blizzards and other
such natural disasters. Relying solely on batteries, and having only an
hour or two of capacity seems rather foolhardy...
Now, to be fair, if electrical work was being done in the building, it
is possible any backup generators that did exist were also turned off
while the work was being performed.
The thing is that other people (like the legacy MCI POP) in the building
didn't go boom. So either the MFS folk didn't coordinate things as well
as the MCI guys, or the MCI guys have really big batteries.
There are couple of weird looking AT&T buildings across the street with
lots of cameras around the block and tons of stuff on the roof. They have
what looks a generator trailer parked in their loading zone, it's been
there as long as I can remember. They look prepared for something.
I know their Brooks facility a couple of blocks away has some really
massive battery/generator setup on-site. Relatively, that place is brand
new.