One of our field agents recently noted that one of ATTWS's LA CDPD towers
suddenly stopped working, ie, there was a good, clean -62 Decibel signal on
Sunday afternoon and suddenly, after a brief rain, it stopped working. The
tower covers an area comprising Diamond Bar, La Puente, parts of the City of
Industry, and the CA-57 (Orange), CA-60 (Pomona) and I-10 (San Bernardino)
Freeways.

The agent, Bill, called AT&T Wireless Data Support at (800) 552-3373,
explained the nature of the problem, that it happened suddenly, that it was
working fine (well, as "fine" as you can get in AT&T's inferior LA CDPD
system -- they run it is badly as BAMS runs the NY Metro system -- the
modems spend more time sending overhead messages to each other and doing
"initializing encryption / awaiting confirmation" than they send any actual
data! :) The coverage area is also VERY, VERY limited and unlike other AT&T
markets where the CDPD footprint is more or less the same as their analog
one, the LA 00027 system has very little CDPD in it's footprint. But this is
a new market for AT&T so I've been inclined to give them some time to build
out their CDPD service now that they have assumed the market from LA
Cellular).

After AT&T did some tests, they said "We just need to reboot it and it
should be fine in about an hour". So an hour goes by, and nothing. As a
matter of fact, it just gets worse.

So Bill calls them on Sunday night, and they say "Ok, well, we will send
someone to the tower on Monday to check it out."

Monday comes, I call Bill and wonder why I can't connect to his laptop, and
Bill says they are working on the tower. Monday passes, and no fix.

Bill then calls Jackie at ATTWS Data Tech Support, who looks at the trouble
ticket, and says "Oh, they did some testing on Monday and then figured out
they did indeed need to go to the site but they are waiting for a phone call
to set it up" (HUH??) When I heard this from Bill I decided to have someone
from our office call them directly and see what is going on.

So we called on Weds (and mind you it is 4 days now that the problem has
been reported) and they say a tech is there working on it now, and it should
be fixed shortly. Weds passes, no service again, and we call them up, and
are told that the new equipment has been put it, but the software won't
download properly.

So on Thurs, getting increasingly fed up with their apparent inability to
service and maintain their own network, I call them myself and tell them
it's ridiculous how long it is taking them to fix this problem and that we
resent being told every day that it would be fixed in a few hours and it
obviously isn't. So I talk to one of the managers there (Ben Cox?) and he
explained in detail the nature of the problem and why it is taking so long,
but said he *thinks* it should be working by Thursday afternoon.

So now it is Thursday evening, and still no service at all.

At this point, I am demanding a full month's credit for service since this
has been a disastrous experience for us, and I am actively looking for some
reasonably priced alternative to AT&T's CDPD as a backup should this happen
elsewhere. (Perhaps with the BAMS/GTE/Airtouch deal the B-carrier will have
CDPD in LA?).

Note this is after last month's fiasco where the Allentown, PA (ex-Vanguard)
system was totally inaccessible to AT&T customers, which followed the Dec
1999 problem in Portland, ME (also ex-Vanguard) where a gateway machine went
down and no one noticed.

I'm sure that if it were a cell tower which went down and AT&T WS was
loosing $500,000 per day in revenue it would be fixed, but since it is CDPD,
it's of apparently very low priority since the results indicate that
competent and sufficient manpower is not being devoted to this (and other
previous) issues.

With service like this, it's no wonder that AT&T's Pocketnet service went/is
going nowhere, and why so many people have just given up on CDPD. If the
largest and staunchest developer and promoter of CDPD  takes a WEEK to 
get a
tower working again (at a very busy intersection of two major freeways) I
can't see why anyone would choose to rely on AT&T's CDPD/Pocketnet
service -- and this is because we TOLD them about it and keep hounding them
to get it fixed -- I can only imaging how long it would take if we left them
to correct in at their own pace!

(In all fairness, the people at AT&T Data are very nice and pleasant, but
they seem ineffectual, and despite their trouble tickets and escalation of
issues, can't seem to muster up sufficient resources and authority to ensure
that an entire tower which has failed is immediately corrected, let alone
let inoperative for a week!)

They have a lot of work to do in terms of responsiveness and network
robustness if they ever expect CDPD/Pocketnet to catch on beyond people who
strongly desire such service, because and this level (or lack of) support,
it is unlikely that most customers would put up with such extended downtime
with no end or resolution in sight.

(This post and other cellular/CDPD posts and issues are also available at:
http://www.wirelessnotes.org)