:But they've never had a sonet outage once in our entire time of doing :business with them. So they do employ competent people. Plenty of them. :But they aren't concerned with IP or SMTP. Absolutely. Without delving into regulatory details, prior to the initiation of VADI (possibly the most egregious misnomer in history) and again now since VADI has been decomissioned, we're quite happy with their competence at layers 1 & 2. There's no question that there's a certain amount of social engineering involved in contacting (or being allowed to contact) competent folk. It's advisable to be sure that any staff who will be contacting them are fully versed in any services they will be discussing. The clueful staff at VZ are much more receptive and accessible when they know in advance that they can expect to pick up a likewise-clued individual. cheers, brian