Massive outage in Corona, Queens, New York City

[Champson]

My internet connection went out last night at around 11pm. After numerous tries, I concluded it must be a problem of the Westell Modem. When I called this afternoon, however, I was told by the technician that Verizon had received over 500 complaint calls from my same area, indicating is was a massive outage in my neighboring area (Corona, Elmhurst and Rego Park, Queens County, New York City).

While so many people are affected by this outage, including my family, which depends on the Internet to make phone calls, Verizon does not seem to be very responsive and the problem drags on for almost a whole day now. Many of my neighbors are considering looking to RCN or AOL for alternative services now. And if the outage lasts longer or appears again, I think I should also think of giving up on Verizon as well.

[smith6612]

Area-Wide outages happen. The last outage I had was on December 25th at 4PM which lasted up to 11PM. The entire remote I was on went down and despite maintaining sync, I could not establish PPPoE connectivity. Your issue sounds more like a Fiber cut or a CO-wide outage if each of those areas come out of a central location.

Whatever the case, VoIP phones while they're meant to be reliable, can't be counted on during an emergency. Same goes with cell phones. It's the breaks of the game unfortunately. Residential connections are also counted as a best-effort service, meaning every effort is made to keep the connection up and working (and should be) to standards, but repair times are not guaranteed. You need an SLA to have a repair time expectation, and on an SLA if you don't get your expectation met, you are refunded. Won't find something like that without paying for a business connection, which of course means a lot of money.

[Champson]

Thanks for the informative explanation. But what does a SLA mean?

[smith6612]

SLA means a Service Level Agreements. It varies based on what is contained within it, but normally an SLA on an Internet connection will cover things such as performance, Reliability, and Repairs. For example, a T1 with an SLA on it which covers performance will state that the circuit will maintain a maximum of x amount of latency when idle to the ISP, and it will have a guaranteed 1.544Mbps of download and upload. As far as Reliability, for a T1 line again, and SLA will typically state that if a line is down for y amount of hours, you can request a refund for the downtime if it is proven to be the provider's fault, either with their wiring or with the provided equipment. Repairs are included into this, where if repairs are not attempted or made within a certain period of time, refunds can be claimed. It's basically something businesses would want if they rely on certain products a ton. SLAs cost a bit of money, and the provider giving the SLA sure does want to live up to the SLA or else they're out the extra money they are receiving.

[Champson]

Thanks, Smith.

The outage ended yesterday afternoon, lasting for about 18 hours. I received a follow-up call from Lenny, Verizon customer service representative. My thanks to her as well.

[smith6612]

Glad to hear things have been solved 🙂