I'm beginning to wonder what kind of numbers our pollyanna prognosticators are using. Right now here in the Seattle-Tacoma area +15% of the time I try to make a phone call I get a recording "all circuits are busy, try your call again later" Now, noone speaks about any telephone outage, so am I to understand If I have a dial tone I am considered to have service even though it connects me to no one? Is that the meaning of the carefully worded statements assuring us "you will have a dial tone when Year 2000 arrives?"

-- Ann Fisher (zyax55b@prodigy.com), December 27, 1998

Answers

Your local provider of telephone services is short of ports. File a really nasty complaint. Give dates and times of bad service.

Basically, the problem stems from the old formula for determining how many ports are needed to service X many customers. This formula assumes that the length of calls fall on a bell curve and the curve will give the average call at about 3 minutes. Well the Internet came to town - and the average call went to over half an hour and is still rising. Things are popping in telephone company land. Massive equipment replacements - fiber being run everywhere - a real madhouse. One good thing though - this growth has really cut down on the amount of old non-Y2K compliant equipment in use.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), December 27, 1998.

Thanks for data Paul - didn't thinkabout that little interface...

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), December 27, 1998.