At the time I worked on the contract with NYSPA around 1976, the reliability goal was one failure in 10 years. This did not include failures from accidents, like cars knocking down power poles, lightning strikes, etc.

From what I've seen at least where I am in NYS, we've had 2 2 hour outages in the last 6 years, one unscheduled, one scheduled for maintenance. The phone company hasn't been as reliable.

Forwarded message:

On Tue, 28 November 2000, Bill Woodcock wrote:

...

> Congress within the next five years will enact legislation mandating > minimum standards for reducing downtime and improving system > reliability

Jeez, if that's all it takes, why didn't they do it years ago? :-)

NEW YORK, Nov 29 (Reuters) - New Jersey, in an effort to encourage utilities to improve the reliability of the state's electric system, adopted, late Tuesday, standards designed to reduce outage frequency and duration.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/001129/n29106533.html

Essentially every book on security, quality control, reliability, etc includes a statement "First, you must have the attention of the top management." How do you get the attention of the top management? Will passing a law or a regulation improve reliablity? It could, if it got the attention of the management of the companies to increase the budget for doing the things better reliability requires.

I'm at the damage prevention convention this week. All the major carriers had people on one of the panels on the problem of fiber cuts. The scariest thing is most carriers only have 1 or 2 people in their entire organization responsible for damage prevention. Worldcom has 2 people watching 60,000 router miles. I think Level 3 had 1 person. Qwest International had 2 people. ATT has a department, but even that seems to be downsized. When carriers are merged, the damage prevention budget is usually cut in half.

I was very impressed with the people from all the carriers. They are all working very hard. But how much can 1 or 2 people really do? Fundamentally, if you want to improve reliability you must make reliability important to the top management of a company. Make it worth the budget management must approve to hire the people to implement the reliability program.

Do you know what I want in an SLA?

I would prefer my circuit never fails, but when it does I don't want money. I want a public apology from the CEO of the company. CEO's at major companies tend to have very strong personalities. They hate to ever admit any problems. Notice when carriers issue press releases with good news, it always includes a quote from the CEO. But when they release bad news, it is always a spokesperson. Maybe if the CEO had to deal with the fall out of reliability problems, he or she would decide increasing the budget a bit is worth it.

After Ebay's CEO had to appear on CNBC, suddenly reliability became important for Ebay. After AOL's CEO had to appear, suddenly reliability became a top management concern of AOL and they spent a lot of money on it.

-- Richard Shetron multics@ruserved.com multics@acm.rpi.edu NO UCE What is the Meaning of Life? There is no meaning, It's just a consequence of complex carbon based chemistry; don't worry about it The Super 76, "Free Aspirin and Tender Sympathy", Las Vegas Strip.