Keeping the phone lines open

The electrical fire that took place at a telephone switching center in the Chicago suburb of Hinsdale on May 8, 1988 is discussed. After the fire, 35000 residential and business customers had no service at all, and others served by some 12000 trunk lines lacked long-distance service. Some areas had no service for a month, and dollar estimates of lost business range from the hundreds of millions to the tens of billions. Some of the factors that made this one of the worst disasters in the history of US telephony are examined. The various types of mishaps that can disrupt phone service are identified. AT&T's approach to protecting its network is discussed. It is stressed that although formal risk analysis has never been prominent in the planning of the national telephone network, a host of standard preparations and procedures has all along amounted to a rigorous, if de facto, form of risk management. Chief among them is redundancy.<
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