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Comment by chevman | Hacker News Reader

Outage Over

Status: Restored AT&T FINAL, Service Degradation, Global Smart Messaging Suite AT&T Global Smart Messaging Suite

Event description: FINAL, Service Degradation Impacted Services: MMS MT Start time: 02-21-2024 22:00 Eastern, 21:00 Central, 19:00 Pacific End time: 02-22-2024 11:00 Eastern, 10:00 Central, 08:00 Pacific

Downtime: 780 minutes

Dear Customer, We are writing to inform you that Global Smart Messaging Suite is now available. The MMS MT service has been restored and our team is currently monitoring Thank you.

AT&T Business Solutions Kind Regards,

The AT&T SMS Service Administrator

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I think a communication like this should include that they are investigating the root cause (assuming they aren’t completely sure) and that they will share it, and state where.

Maybe im reading to much into it but it bothers me that thats not in the communication.

They most certainly are investigating the root cause, and probably there's a witch hunt developing, but as far as customers go I would expect AT&T's attitude to be "none of your business." I've worked with many of these types of companies before, and outside of the occasional cool CS rep, their cultures are lots of information hoarders and responsibility dodgers. Taking responsibility for a problem is a good way to ensure you never get promoted.

"A recently departed employee had a core router's power going through a wall switch. This was done to facilitate quick reboots. A cleaning contractor turned off the switch thinking it was a light. It took us several hours to determine the situation and restore power"

I think the telecom issue playbook is significantly different than the SaaS playbook. Not sure if that’s just cultural or if there are other drivers - maybe paying customer telecom interfaces are simpler and more closed than typical SaaS?

IME, telecom as an industry is highly focused on the RCA, ICA, and uptime, and has had that embedded culturally for decades. Sharing the information publicly doesn't have much value, in the balance, unless there are a string of incidents where an acute perception problem needs to be addressed. This would more likely result in a marketing and advertising strategy rather than the sharing of technical RCA details. Additionally, one must consider that not all RCA details are fit for public disclosure. _You_ may be interested in deets, but John Q. Public is not interested beyond "Is it fixed yet?". If you want insider perspective, work in/with the industry. It's fascinating stuff.

Doe that include cellular voice calls?

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