[LEAPSECS] ATT drops time

[John Hawkinson]

It's always so hard for some of us to remember that AT&T is now an
RBOC again, and of course they're not talking about the long-distance
portion of the company...

Chris O'Byrne <obyrne at iol.ie> wrote on Thu, 30 Aug 2007
at 10:50:38 +0100 in <46D692EE.9060006 at iol.ie>:


> I had an encounter with the phone company's clock many years ago that leads 

> me to say "good riddance".

...

> So I called the phone company. Unfortunately, the person who maintained the 

> clock was out, so I had to talk to his secretary. She was astonished - "why 


I think your problem here is a relatively common one, and what you
fail to appreciate is your extreme good fortune in being able to actually
*find* anyone who admits to having anything to do with the equipment
responsible for this.

Here in Boston, 617-MEridien7-1234 has pretty much never been right
anytime I've called it. I spent quite a bit of effort a few years ago
trying to find anyone at Verizon (perhaps it was NYNEX at the time?)
who would admit to having any responsibility at all. 

Even armed with the NANPA database, telling me the CLLI code for the
facility was BSTNMAHA637, I was able to get ahold of service
technicians who worked in the building, but never anybody who actually
knew... Eventually I gave up.

Though frankly, this afternoon is even more depressing. Calling,
it is not even consistent.

At 12:57:42, it beeps claiming to be 12:57:30.
At 12:57:53, it beeps claiming to be 12:57:50.
At 12:58:05, it beeps claiming to be 12:58:10.
At 12:58:17, it beeps claiming to be 12:58:20.


:(



The other great irony is that the clocks on digital cellular networks
aren't so hot either, often off by a few seconds, at least last I
checked. And, of course, they don't tend to get daylight saving
changes instantly either...

--jhawk at mit.edu
  John Hawkinson