Ameritech software glitch silences toll-free calls

By LEE BERGQUIST
of the Journal Sentinel staff

Last Updated: Oct. 3, 2001

Consumers could not make calls using toll-free phone numbers for nearly four hours Wednesday morning in Wisconsin and four other Midwestern states.

The cause of the problem was a software glitch in Ameritech servers that manage toll free calls in the Midwest.

Ameritech spokeswoman Lisa Claybon said the company had not pinpointed the reason for the glitch.

Service went down at 8:15 a.m. and much of it was restored an hour later, according to Claybon.

Toll service was fully restored at 12:10 p.m.

In addition to Wisconsin, Ameritech customers in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio were affected.

The glitch potentially touched millions of customers. One example: Alliant Energy Corp. of Madison, a utility serving 1.3 million customers in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, routinely gets 8,000 to 10,000 calls daily on its toll-free line.

Alliant spokesman Chris Schoenherr said the loss of service meant increased traffic later in the day.

Toll-free numbers are obtained by dialing these prefixes: 800, 877, 888 and 866.

Ameritech is owned by SBC Communications of San Antonio and has more than 12 million phone customers in the five states.

In other parts of the country, customers of long-distance companies had sporadic trouble making or receiving toll-free calls from the Midwest.

Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Oct. 4, 2001.

JSOnline

Glitch knocks out toll-free phone, credit card services

Toll-free phone services were temporarily interrupted for millions of Ameritech Corp. customers across the Midwest on Wednesday after a software glitch caused the phone company's switching equipment to malfunction.
   Beginning at about 9:15 a.m., callers in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio received busy signals when attempting calls with the 800, 887, 888 and other toll-free prefixes. The company has 12 million customers in the region.
   Within an hour, Ameritech had sniffed out the problem and had patched up its system completely by 1:10 p.m., officials said.
   "Our systems switched into 'overload' mode for an unknown reason," which caused toll-free calls from Ameritech customers to be dropped, said Blair Klein, spokeswoman for San Antonio-based SBC Communications Inc.'s Ameritech unit.
   Calls from outside the region to 800 numbers within the Midwest were unaffected.
   "We're now trying to investigate what caused the problem," Klein said.
   Besides the inconvenience to dialers, the outage affected businesses by disrupting credit card processing and mail order retailers, although most problems were minor.
   "Its effect on Lands' End has been minimal" with call volumes down only slightly, said Beverly Holmes, communications director at the mail order firm in Dodgeville, Wis.
   Holmes said the company's toll-free lines are provided by MCI, so only customers calling with Ameritech phone lines were affected.
   Meijer Inc. said business carried on as normal during the outage.
   "There was minimal disruption in outgoing calls. We heard of some problem calling insurance companies at the pharmacies, but otherwise, we were not affected," said Meijer spokesman Steve VanWagoner.
   Ameritech has been plagued by soaring customer dissatisfaction since its 1999 acquisition by SBC, incurring millions of dollars in state fines throughout the region for failing to meet installation and repair service standards. This year, however, the number of complaints has dropped and even critics have acknowledged improved service.

Detroit News

Toll free calls blocked by phone system failure

Thousands of calls to toll-free numbers were met with busy signals today after an Ameritech system for routing calls through Chicago failed.

The server system went down about 8:15 a.m. Partial service was restored at 9:30 a.m. By 12:10 a.m., the entire system was operating, company spokesman Aaron Schoenherr said.

"It was a software problem," he said. “It had nothing to do with call volume."

Nor did technicians believe someone from outside the system had tried to sabotage operations, Schoenherr said.

The service interruption was worst in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. Ameritech has about 12 million customers in those five states.

The outage affected those trying to call toll-free numbers, including customers with calling cards accessed via number with an 800, 888, 877 or 866 prefix.

The company, which is owned by SBC Communications of San Antonio, has no way of knowing exactly how many tried to make calls that never went through, Schoenherr said. While the problem was worst in the Midwest, even calls from one coast to another might have been affected if a company was using an Ameritech toll-free number.

Work was under way this afternoon to determine what caused the server software to fail. The server is a computer traffic cop, directing calls from one place to another.

"We’re trying to determine the root cause and whether this was something internal or external to our network,’’ Schoenherr said.

Chicago Sun-Times

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001