US Telco Support > FairPoint > [connectivity] FP outage in Vermont?

[connectivity] FP outage in Vermont?

South Burlington went slow, then dead, around 2:30 PM today (I have a friend which computers I support). Went there to troubleshoot, then called Fairpoint tech support. The recording says, "as of 2:50PM today, people in Vermont won't be able to connect, their engineers are working on it, and there is no ETA. Hang up and call back later." (to paraphrase)

The have a news item on their web site that says they lost their whole new England call center today, and then got it back running.

maybe related, the South Burlington PD and all the municipal offices also lost their (Fairpoint supplied) phones for most of today. The Burlington free press is reporting it was an "old circuit" that caused the issue. But the BFP isn't know for details (or getting facts correct, for that matter).
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Ours went out at 1:20 as well (Williston Rd, South Burlington.) Lucked out - got to support in about 90 seconds (after recording with foolish suggestion to use live online chat) and then had a really pleasant support person. She put me on hold and came back to say that so far her collegues had fielded 5 or 6 calls so far so it may be a regional issue. Submitted a ticket anyhow just in case, and a call back later gave me the recording about the Vermont-wide outage.

Strangely enough, FP DSL is fine at home. I think I'm out of the Colchester CO here (old part of Fort Ethan Allen on the Essex/Colchester line)

Was still out when I left work at 5:15.
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Daniel Gwozdz (VWSpeedRacer)

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Water-cooled Volkswagen World

reply to n1zuk

reply to tschmidt
Oops.. My bad. Happened 5-8-2009, not 6-8-2009.

Maybe it is just FairPoints time of the month?

reply to VWSpeedRacer
TV crews are now covering the story:
»www.wcax.com/global/story.asp?s=10498226

The television coverage should assure that FP doesn't drop the ball before the issue actually gets resolved, so that is prolly a very good thing...

~Arel
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crispy and good with catsup."

reply to uovgaz
There is no ball. They haven't had the ball in months. TV covered the DNS fiasco last week, and they'll cover whatever goes wrong next week. There's been tons of TV and print news about FairPoint this year. »www.stopthecap.com has a great series running right now (up to part 10 and still going) outlining the history of this thing, and every part has 3-5 video news clips relevant to the time frame covered for that part.
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Daniel Gwozdz (VWSpeedRacer)

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Water-cooled Volkswagen World

reply to uovgaz
Rutland Herald - »www.rutlandherald.com/article/20···3/NEWS02

reply to uovgaz
Modem log shows connectivity was finally restored at 10:20PM, which (at least in our case) gives about 9 hours of outage. I wish Burlington Telco would push their fiber into SB.

reply to uovgaz
My dad called me yesterday and said his DSL was out along with everyone else he knew. He called the PoorPoint helpline and got a recording telling him to go to a website for further assistance. HELLO?? IF ANYONE FROM POORPOINT READS THESE FORUMS, IF YOUR CUSTOMER CAN NOT GET ONLINE, HOW THE F@%$ SUPPOSED TO GO TO YOUR WEBSITE?

If he would of held on a little longer, he also would of got the recording that told him that if he lives in Vermont, to hang up as they didn't want to talk to you...
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reply to VWSpeedRacer

reply to uovgaz
Our FairPoint business DSL has been down since June 4th (1 week now). We have a static IP but they put the ticket in on level "medium." We're in downtown Hanover, NH, the building right next to Town Hall! We call every day and they say the same thing, it's being worked on. We point out that they have not met their own estimates and should contact the central office here directly, but they claim they don't have the number of the "local garage". When we first called they said they would have it fixed in 1 to 3 business days. Then they said they had until Tuesday, 5 pm. Now they have no estimated time.

FairPoint communications has obviously paid all their merger costs to the investment banks and senior managers. They have not professionally allocated technical support costs for New Hampshire. For all we know there's only one DSL guy in all of New Hampshire and he's at home with the flu.

This is more proof that free markets are not the whole answer. You need a government smart enough to protect its citizens from monopolistic business that can selfishly cut costs, renege on its service contract, to protect it's own profits.

reply to uovgaz
thanks for the suggestion, jadziedzic. After spending a bunch of time carefully doing my online complaint this is what I got! I know you won't be surprised

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A System Error just occurred

The complaintfrm.aspx page experienced an error.

We apologize for this error. Please contact the PUC if the error persists.

Please click "OK" to return to the NHPUC Home page.

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reply to uovgaz
In defense of the New Hampshire PUC they immediately responded about the web page problem (my text had non ASCII characters) and are working on the solution. I also called and someone immediately took down my information and contacted Fairpoint. So I'm hoping...

I did the same thing in VT. Unfortunately I was told that internet is not state regulated and all they can do is informally talk with FP. It has been weeks since then and I still have not heard back.

reply to uovgaz
Two guys finally came. Same guys who fixed my home DSL a year or so back. They said about 70 DSL accounts went dead last week about same time. They stayed late to fix mine. Said they can't wear their Fairpoint jackets or people would hijack them on the street. They hypothisized that it might have been a problem with Verizon pulling their static IPs without informing Fairpoint. Sounds right to me.

As people have predicted on this board's earlier posts, Fairpoint was not big enough to acquire all these lines. My friend got one of Verizon's personal Internet routers (works through cell signals) and I must say the thing is amazing. Obviously, Verizon wants Fairpoint to die so it can sell wireless access in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. That's my guess. These guys said they do their best because they take keeping their customers seriously. I believe them. They dug up ground in the winter to fix a frayed line for my home DSL.

I told them I was only half upset about the DSL being down for a week. The other problem is Fairpoint didn't give me ANY useful information. If Fairpoint had said, we're having a networking problem that is affecting 70 other people I would have at least felt, well, not alone.

Sad, that Fairpoint has immitated Verizon's customer service instead of proving that they can give personalized service (which they eventually did and can do).

Anyway, that's the end of my saga. Although i don't have any specific facts, I believe Verizon started this problem and Fairpoint, unfortunately, didn't rise to the occassion.

If you're reading this, Fairpoint, you need to trust your people and allow informatoin to travel more freely between your tech support people, the network center and your field workers. All the tech people picked up the phone right away and were very professional and tried hard to help. But there's only so much they can do if they can't talk to field guys when big problems like this arise.

If, after the 3 days had expired, a support guy would have been able to talk for a minute to the local garage he would have been told there was a massive problem and then I could have least felt in the loop.