atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General Telecom News 45,000 Verizon employees on strike

I just opened a trouble ticket with VZ and was on hold for only 30 seconds, (way below par).
I chatted up the rep and asked her if there were techs out in the field in case a dispatch was necessary to fix my issue and she tells me "Yes, management is out in the field doing the repair work." Needless to say, I spit my drink all over my desk.
Is that possible?

I noticed that as well.

My recent call into the Verizon ATRAC was answered very quickly. Normally calls into the center are queued up for 30 or more minutes. The reported trouble...a dead T1....was resolved within 48 hours. Given the circumstances, both my customer and I were quite happy with the results.

Last week I turned up 4 spans worth of trunks to Verizon's tandem in Providence RI. No problems at all. :thumb:

@dexman:

Out of sheer curiosity, what is average MTTR on T-1 circuits (in non-strike/normal conditions) in your experience?

TIA

It depends on the nature/cause of the outage.

A fiber that is cut or dug up by a backhoe or washed out by a flood can take a day or more to fix....depending on the severity and location of the cut/flooding ability to access the trouble...etc. Ditto if an outage is caused by a tree/limb taking down wires & telephone poles.

A dead NIU or bad cable pair can go an entire day...depending on how fast the auto test system completes its analysis, what Verizon's technicians have for a work load and when the trouble ticket is opened with the Verizon ATRAC...which, as I mentioned earlier, in normal times can run over 30 minutes in queue just to speak with someone. On multiple occasions, I've had queue waits in excess of 90 minutes.

If a cable crew is needed, then that will add time because the Special Services technician has to do his/her thing before the crew can be scheduled for a DPO. And, of course, technicians requiring site access need to adhere to the customer's hours of operation.

Issues with in-house T1s....for example 8001/T1ZF/BSTNMACOW03/BSTNMAFRDC0 usually take less time to resolve because the circuits terminate into a C.O. If the office is manned, then you could be looking at a few hours (again depending on the auto test system, nature of the problem, cause and workload).

If a C.O. is unmanned, then repair times are longer because the roamer needs to drive to the site. If the trouble needs to go to 2nd level or above, that will add to the MTR.

Interesting...thanks for sharing.

I was under the impression that most trouble tickets are opened through an email, at least in the area that I work in (NYC)...the fact that you have to wait as long as I do on hold is honestly quite ridiculous, since you're the one reporting the trouble...doh...

We are pressured to complete trouble tickets in *significantly* shorter period of time compared to what you're saying, but I guess that every area is different...

I'd have a lot of explaining to do if I were to take much more than two hours (from time of DPO) if I just swapped the R card...and verified that the service is back with no errors on the circuit...a F1 pair change can be an hour or eight hours depending on a variety of factors...and yes, once it goes to cable all bets are off...

"back to cable" = torture

For the customer/end user - absolutely.

If you're on my side of the street, though, torture is sitting in a completely isolated tower where no dialtone is present and waiting for someone on the other end to find a person who knows how to test a radio line...while the battery on your blackberry is running out...

In one of these charming spots someone actually wrote " In memory of all who died here waiting for the tester "...

If the general public only knew the extent of all sorts of important data that still travels over the Verizon's "money-losing landline side" they would be pretty amazed...and most of that stuff can never be provisioned by a cable company...

Verizon does have 2 online trouble ticket systems (VTAG and Quick Tick(?)).

At one time, tickets for Hi-Cap circuits could be opened through with the Quick Tick, but now VTAG is needed. Verizon has approved our office for VTAG access, but we're having trouble finding out who in our company acts as the administrator for that system.

Once a ticket is opened through the ATRAC, I can track it via Quick Tick.

I suspect that the goals set forth for trouble ticket resolution are fairly uniform throughout Verizon's areas. Whether or not those goals are being met is another story.

How about Fire Alarm circuits (and alarms in general).

Somewhere I saw a post from someone who was installing one of those "Help, I've fallen and can't get up" systems for an elderly customer, and had absolutely no luck getting it to work with a cable phone line.

How about Fire Alarm circuits (and alarms in general).

Somewhere I saw a post from someone who was installing one of those "Help, I've fallen and can't get up" systems for an elderly customer, and had absolutely no luck getting it to work with a cable phone line. [/QUOTE]

I've never dealt with one of those, but all the alarms circuits I've seen in my time sat on conventional copper...not saying that they can't be provisioned differently, but I have yet to see it...

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