You know if Sprint is gutsy enough (maybe customer centered would be a better word?) to do this, why can't MCI? I had private mail today from a network manager at a major MCI customer lamenting that the MCI higher ups refused to allow MCI to show their customers this courtesy (creation of an MCI outtage list). Is this attitude part of what HWB was complaining about?
Distributing such email is certainly gutsy/nice, and may be the right thing for now, but in the long run it will not be the right thing, unless you like to drown in email. Gordon, say you connect to a random location X across the country. As a plain user. You perceive a problem (packet loss, connection drop, whatever). You may not even know what it means in every detail, but you sure know there is a problem. In a perfect world, what would you like to see? Send a query (email, phone, finger, servqualityport, whatever) to your local service provider "problem to reach X," and a kinda immediate (perhaps machine generated) response "we know of a flood in Kansas, 90% likelihood the cause for your problem. Will be fixed in 30 minutes by rerouting." Fine, you'd think, I'll take a nap and try again in 45 minutes. What are you getting instead? Standard is that a user has no clue of either the cause for the problem, or a procedure for problem resolution. If I send email to *any* (well, many, can't claim I have tried them all) service provider I may on a good day get a response within several hours. Typically saying they forwarded it to their service provider (who may rarely respond to them, based on experience). I *really* don't care who's fault a specific incident is. I would like to know that people are aware of it and working on it, and an expected repair time. Just like with lots of other things in life. That too much to ask for as a user?