This was referenced on an earlier thread, but it worthy of its own.

http://www.currents.net/newstoday/99/07/02/news7.html

Y2K Phone Outages By Steve Gold, Newsbytes July 02, 1999

Ongoing research from International Monitoring suggests that the Y2K problem will impact most North and South American countries, with an average outage or service disruption lasting eight days.

Nick Gogerty, a senior consultant with the London-based firm, said that the countries' risk profiles vary relative to their telecommunications usage profile, related infrastructure, and Y2K bug fix efforts.

Gogerty told Newsbytes that the analysis involved modeling the technological inventory and usage profile of 30 countries out of a total of 32 in the Americas.

The countries' technological profile was then combined with an economic profile and a Y2K preparedness estimate based on internal, external, and independent third party sources.

According to Gogerty, the estimates of unfinished or improperly finished Y2K fixes were then applied to a damage estimate scale. The scale, called the IM-Y2K Rating, ranks countries from 0.0 to 9.0, with 9.0 being the worst case scenario.

The average rating for the Americas was 5.5 IM-Y2K. This 5.5 IM-Y2K rating corresponds with an average telecoms delay and network outage of eight days.

Gogerty said that the scale, known as the IM-Y2K rating, is used by International Monitoring to assess the risk profile for 140 countries.

"The scale is used to assess the probable delays in critical infrastructure such as utilities, telecoms, transportation and finance due to Y2K problems, which will be unfixed or fixed improperly," he said.

International Monitoring says there was significant variance in preparedness with Bermuda and the US considered as being the most prepared and Central American countries the least prepared.

The IM-Y2K Rating assumes that Y2K fix rates are maintained at current levels. The firm says that the ratings are updated to reflect changes in national and private sector fix efforts as they become available.

As a result of its findings, International Monitoring has urged its government and corporate clients to make appropriate contingency plans and communicate their readiness as soon as possible.

IM's Web site is at http://www.intl-monitoring.com

-- regular (zzz@z.z), July 02, 1999

Answers

I keep flashing back to an old Koskinen quote: "..People are generally concerned about the infrastructure: will I get a dial tone?..."

-- Lisa (lisa@work.now), July 02, 1999.

Interesting point of view, and an interesting conclusion.

One caution - are the government's predictions equally accurate, or are they unbiased, or are these guys unbiased? Are the government's predictions also based on some "completion rate" model?

First time I've seen that term - I like it's assumed ability to make a prediction of completion based on "rates of (reported) remediation complete" rather than "announced predicted remediation completion dates".

Does everybody else see the critical difference between the two? You can of course argue forever (or at least until next January) about terms like "compliant" vs "ready", about self-reported or audited results, about adequacy of testing or amount of testing actually required. Even here, you can argue until January about the reported compliant completion percentages, or the amount of the threat of non-compliance, BUT the basic metric appears far more realistic thatn other methods.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), July 02, 1999.

I for one have NO CLUE as to who these people are. They've only "popped into being" in the last couple weeks, it seems. Because of that, I cannot give credence to ANYTHING these people (IM) say, until they have been "vouched for" by some company(ies) or group(s) that knows them...

And no, I'm NOT a polly. (don't play one on TeeVee either)

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), July 02, 1999.

There goes the banking system.

-- FLAME AWAY (BLehman202@aol.com), July 02, 1999.

This might surprise pollies, but given the untrustworthy, self-reported character of the data, I put no credence in these figures whatsover. Telecom could be up 100%, no down-time, down 8 days or down 80 days in your area.

Who knows? Who cares (in a sense)? We're on the Funhouse ride and we ain't getting off till it's over ....

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 02, 1999.

Oh, gee and just when I thought you were so optimistic! 8<)

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), July 02, 1999.

If the phone system is down throughout the nation for 8 days, TEOTWAWKI is a certainty. The phone system must be up for the electrical grid to work and vice versa.

-- Mr. Adequate (mr@adequate.com), July 03, 1999.