[RTC List] Time for Redundant Fiber

Tue Oct 9 21:46:19 PDT 2007

Admittedly, I'm rather a "lurker" on this list . . . . but I am damned glad that THIS ONE really seems to have everyone's dander up.

99% of my clients are out of the area, so I definitely got hurt today . . . . but I think one subject that really deserves attention in a big way that isn't getting it is the inability to process credit/debit card transactions when this happens.

There are many ramifications here, and they are probably larger than the loses those of us who depend upon the Internet ( not to mention long distance phone & cell ) to operate have incurred -- what of all of the businesses locally who can't do sales because folks can't use their "electric money"?

For example, how much did Humboldt Merchant Services lose today over local businesses not being able to process? 

How much did big boxes like Target, KMart, & Costco Wholesale lose? Did Verizon and Sprint lose money because folks couldn't go over their allotted hours this month or rack up "per use" charges, etc.? Shouldn't they be interested in throwing some of their weight in on this?

Frankly, my wife and I have become so accustomed to this that we don't even bother to go to the bank or the grocery store or anywhere else when this happens. Of course, much of this will be made up for tomorrow, but how much won't be? For example, we won't be going to the grocery store tomorrow to buy what we were going to by, because we just dug into the freeze and the cupboards to find something. Business lost for a grocer there.

And what about those deadliners out there who meant to pay some bill online on time today, but couldn't and now got smacked with a late fee? Those late fees also must trickle out of spending that would contribute to this economy locally. 

Did local "day traders" lose money or fail to make money because they couldn't trade? Even in a county this size, there must be some losses here to the local economy.

Any real estate deals didn't close today?

Has anyone on this list lost a prospect or a client because of these issues? Probably not a major issue here, but every dollar lost here is a dollar not working for this local economy.

The issues here are MUCH larger than the techie/IT interests of the RTC, really; they probably concern most of all of the businesses and business in this area.

As for me, fortunately I run a "virtual" office, and I'm the only one stuck in these situations, so it's not like my whole business is stopped because of it . . . . but, even just these 4 days of cut fiber issues since last Christmas are enough to make me relocate to Portland. I can't take it any more. I'm sure there are others who are seriously weighing whether they should hang in there and wait, or relocate to somewhere with redundancy. In all honestly, this isn't the only reason I'm relocating ( air faire would be another major issue, as well as opportunities for my wife who can't find much in the way of that here ), but this issue has to have folks thinking about whether they really want to relocate TO here ( as we did several years ago ) or about whether they want to relocate FROM here ( as we are doing now ). None of this could be at all good for the local economy.

It saddens me because I came here with an ethic of bringing money INTO this economy form outside, but now I'm just going to have to take that to Portland. But before I go, I'm completely on board with any serious measures to put pressure on ANY of the "powers that be" to rally absolutely everyone to the cause of getting some redundancy up in here ( and I really think we need to "think outside the box" in terms of getting folks who aren't as Internet-dependent as we all are to see how it is affecting them and get them on board with the cause ).

All the best,

--  Sean

Sean Connors
Web Merchant Services
www.WMSmerchantservices.com
Sean at WMSmerchantservices.com
1-877-569-6584 (sales and fax)
1-707-443-4447 (support)

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Peter Krueger 
  To: RTC 
  Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 8:47 PM
  Subject: [RTC List] Time for Redundant Fiber

  Yes folks it happened again and I personally am happy it did.  Heres my story.  I own a small tech and multimedia company with 11 employees in Humboldt County.

  The major production interruptions.

  1) We had a teleconference scheduled with one of our international companies that didn't happen this afternoon because long distance to LA didn't work at any time for us during the day.

  Major hassle just letting them know  that we couldn't even connect via phone. Fortunately the marketing director for the company was here and his out of the area cellphone DID work.  (Area code 408 I believe)  So they knew early in the day that it was sketchy. Fortunate there.  So we are now part of holding up final color approvals for print jobs thanks to this. Because of other parties schedules we are going to have the teleconference this Friday. If any of you have worked with software companies you know that even a few days delay is a problem and is bad. 

  2) Production deadlines. We had several projects with deadlines just not happen and we couldn't get mockups approved. All in all we lost a lot of productivity and will have to make that up during the next few days. 

  It was a major inconvenience to my company and made the whole area look like a backwater town.

  --------------------------------
  Why I am happy about it.  

  It happened at a much more inconvenient time this time and highlights how VULNERABLE we are to a much LONGER OUTAGE. 
  If we want jobs here for our kids that are knowledge based tech jobs its a good time to lobby for them once more.  Time to WAKE UP everyone.  This is not an isolated outage or problem. Any established company we may want to move into the area and create jobs wouldn't consider taking this kind of hit repeatedly.  We need redundancy and we needed it TODAY.

  What I am going to do.

  I will be drafting a letter to the Fortuna City Council to encourage them to work towards redundant fiber connections to help ameliorate this issue. 

  Lets Get It Done!   It makes cents. Lots of cents. 

  Peter

  ----------------------------

  Peter Krueger

  Precision Intermedia

  http://www.precisionintermedia.com

  Phone 707-725-0804

  Fax 888-440-3858

  Wireless 707-845-2344

  Imagine No Limits...

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