Networks Are Taking Longer To Repair Despite Focus On Boosting Reliability By JESSE DRUCKER and AMY SCHATZ Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 10, 2005; Page B10 Despite a new focus on strengthening traditional U.S. telecommunications systems to withstand terrorism and natural disasters, telephone-network outages have grown more severe and are lasting longer to repair. [...] In the past four years, the median duration of an outage was 3.3 hours -- "significantly higher" than the 2.86 hours it took to restore operations during the first eight years data were tracked, according to the report. The severity of the outages -- which takes into account several factors, including the number of customers affected -- has also jumped over the past four years. [...]