The reason it is imperative that there be a telephone number for an ISP is that it's really hard to use e-mail to contact an ISP if the network connectivity to the ISP is not working.
I guess its that time again. Between May 11 and May 15 I will be conducting my Emergency NOC Phone Test. This is an unannounced test where I call each of the phone numbers given to me by providers I interconnect with. The rules are listed on <http://dranet.dra.com/verify-contact.html>. Although I say its 'unannounced' if you want to tell your NOC folks I'll be calling next week go ahead. In practice I've found corporate culture tends to overwhelm any special advance notice. In case you are interested, the very best performance in the last emergency NOC phone contact test was by the Defense Communications Agency/DISA NOC. They earned four stars, out of five, losing only one point because the operator did not know how to call their NOC from outside the US. 1-800 numbers are difficult to dial outside the US. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation