Carriers are a pain in the you-know-what when it comes to these types of troubles. Nobody thinks anymore. You see a failure, you report it to the carrier. 75% of the time a tech doesn't touch it with AT&T long distance, it goes to an automated system that auto-tests your circuit. What does it do? It loops up the smartjack, tests to it, then loops up the CSU, and tests to it. Of course it finds nothing because hey, test ok, the alarms have already cleared so therefore it MUST be your fault (which is BS).
Unfortunately a lot of the techs aren't better. They'll take a window, they'll test, and that window is just the gospel of anything and everything with your circuit. A lot of times they don't even stop and LOOK at what they are seeing.
A lot of smartjacks have performance monitors built in to them (sometimes referred to as a genius jack). I wonder if before intrusively jumping into the circuit and testing it somebody has actually looked at the alarm history both at the smartjack as well as the test points in AT&T's network to see who's seeing what from where. I never understood how people can just jump in and hit a button to have a little computer tell them what the problem is without understanding to look at the orientation of the errors/failure!
If I seem a bit harsh it's because I used to work in a remote test center for a carrier and this became a serious pet peeve for me as I watched them and other carriers dumb down their techs to the point that they became test system monkeys. They push the magic button, it does the work for them, and they spit out the result without any thought. Works great for most cut-and-dry failures, but as soon as you get something intermittent it becomes a problem.
The red alarm you're seeing on your system indicates a loss of framing. As a result, your system would generate a yellow alarm to transmit towards the carrier. If the path to the carrier was good, that signal would get to them and they could see it on their alarm history. If it was not, they would see history of AIS.
The point is that they would see something. I would bet money that nobody has even looked at the history, and now doing so would be useless as the data would be corrupted with intrusive testing.
If AT&T comes back after Verizon changes the cable pair as a problem with Verizon and then closes their ticket, and the trouble comes back, tell them you want them to monitor the PMs for a few days. When the trouble occurs again, call them up, and ask them what the PMs show. At least then you can get a handle on the orientation of the fault. The same can be done with Verizon if AT&T asks so they can pull the PMs off the smartjack (which if it's a 'genius jack' they can do remotely as it will store the PM info...in fact, AT&T can get it too if they know how which saves a lot of effort). That way the next failure can go like this:
"My T1 just failed again, I have a red alarm on my CSU. That means I lost framing." --You
"Red alarm history on the smartjack too, must be failing before here." --Verizon
"AIS history on the first port...must be an issue between this port and the smartjack, let's start changing things out to see if it helps." --Verizon
Of course, it's never that easy, but it beats the hell out of chasing after a ghost with random T1 testing. If an intermittent issue not presenting itself on a long intrusive test then it's a crap shoot to catch. It's much easier (and more logical) to look at the errors/alarms you're seeing and start making educated guesses.
Sorry for the long rant.
