BellSouth Completes Y2K Upgrade of Central Office Switches;....

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Seen any blue and white signs lately?

FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY

BellSouth Completes Y2K Upgrade of Central Office Switches; 'Backbone of the Telephone Network Ready for the Year 2000'

ATLANTA, July 6 /PRNewswire/ -- BellSouth has passed yet another milestone in its Year 2000 program by upgrading every central office switch in its network with software that is Year 2000 compliant according to the switch manufacturers.

``This is a significant achievement,'' said Rick Harder, BellSouth's Vice President with overall responsibilities for the company's Year 2000 program. ``This means the backbone of our telephone network is ready for the Year 2000.'' BellSouth Telecommunications -- the traditional landline telephone company -- has 1,702 central office switches in its network. BellSouth Cellular's companies have 34 mobile telephone switches in their networks.

All of the switches have been upgraded with Year 2000-compliant software by the switch manufacturer.

``It's important to note that we have tested every software upgrade in our laboratories in a Year 2000 environment to make sure that calls will go through as normal,'' said Harder. ``All of our tests show that the Year 2000 should have no effect on making and completing phone calls.''

Telephone switches have undergone rigorous testing for the Year 2000. Manufacturers have conducted tests, as has BellSouth. Several telecommunications industry groups including the Telco Year 2000 Forum and the Alliance for Telecom Industry Solutions have also tested the switches.

BellSouth is a member of both of those industry groups.

Detailed information about the type of switches used by BellSouth is available at BellSouth's Year 2000 website at www.bellsouth.com/year2000 .

BellSouth is a $23 billion communications services company. It provides telecommunications, wireless communications, cable and digital TV, directory advertising and publishing, and Internet and data services to nearly 34 million customers in 19 countries worldwide.



-- Sista In 'Da Hood (Sista@da.hood), July 06, 1999

Answers

They also said that 50% of their vendors lied about compliance.

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), July 06, 1999.

User beware--Y2K compliance claims could be bogus

-- (@ .), July 06, 1999.

Mike:

I bet they found out that those 50% of vendors lied when they did their own testing. After that, I'd bet the lied-about software or components were corrected or replaced.

-- Anita (spoonera@msn.com), July 07, 1999.


Bellsouth only has three major vendors for central office switches (Lucent, Nortel, Siemens). They have had the same vendors for many years, so they have a much easier job getting ready for y2k than many other businesses. If they have problems, it will likely be with their maintenance, accounting, etc. systems.

-- Dave (dannco@hotmail.com), July 07, 1999.

Dave,

There Wireline switches are supplied by the vendors mentioned in your post. Wireless switches and infrastructure supplied partially by Hughes and Ericsson (depending on the region). They should not have any problems with the upgrades to the wireless networks...

-- william holst (w_holst@hotmail.com), July 07, 1999.



what a joke! Hellsouth can't even keep their phones up when a good breeze is blowing. We have been after them to replace lines in our rural area for a year. They are so bad you have to yell for the person on the end of the line to hear you, and my internet connection will disconnect at least 10x a hour. This is within 40 miles of Atlanta.

Word from one of their repair techs, was the new "owners" of Hellsouth several years ago, are penny pinching and they have NO INTENTION of repairing much. Bux for Y2k? I doubt it.

ROFL :-)

-- gale (gale@home.com), July 07, 1999.


This is now Phase 2: They reported Phase 1 a long ways ago (which was the lab-based testing) also to great fanfare and publicity. At that time, they (Bell South) very specifically did NOT say they had actually converted their switch operations at each site, only that they had tested the operations in the single lab test.

Good, now they need to implement Phase 3 - integrated testing - at each site. Phase 4 - complete alternate/backup power tests and switching and satellite/outside/inside comm's (911 master stations, etc.) Phase 5 - overseas connections and switches. (Canada - I don't think is treated as overseas but is considered simple long distance, but Mexico ? )

Phase 6 - other long distance companies. Might be done as part of the operating system conversion at the corporate level - since it pertains to billing and money exchange.....any other steps I've missed? Any of these that have been completed already?

Stir well. Repeat at every other regional phone company nationally. Serve over ice.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), July 07, 1999.


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