On Friday, 15 August 2003, at 16:19PM, Dragos Ruiu wrote:

This is the third such outage the American power grid has seen since dc isolated zones were set up, the first in 1965, the second in 1978. There was also another incident about half this size in 1996 in the western region, where most but not all of a region went out.

The power system as a network probably counts as one of the most reliable things humans have ever built.

I don't recall any any incidents during which similar numbers of people lost all internet access, or all telephone access, for as long as the power has been out -- and it's difficult to imagine a scenario in which that could happen (other than another widespread power failure). Reliability is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. Joe