Fun with phones.
I have really tried to stay away from the Immigration debate but this story was just too much fun.
"Many Senate office phones were down Thursday morning due to a “modest increase in call volume,” according to an e-mail from the Senate assistant sergeant at arms and the chief information officer.
Opponents of the bipartisan immigration reform bill that stalled in the Senate after a 46-53 cloture vote this morning said foes of the bill had flooded Senate offices with phone calls.
“The Verizon telephone switch[board] serving the Senate is experiencing problems that are being exacerbated by this morning’s modest increase in call volume,” says the e-mail, which was sent at 9:45 a.m.
Verizon is attempting to resolve problems and the voicemail system has been temporarily disconnected from the telephone switchboard.
“Calls will still go to the voice mail system, but callers will receive the generic voice mail greeting (‘You have reached the United States Senate voice messaging service ...’) rather than the voice mail greeting of the person or office being called,” the notice continued."
I've worked in telecommunications on the equipment side of the house and the dial tone side of the house. As such I tend to look for the key words and phrases. In this case the key phrase was " the voicemail system has been temporarily disconnected from the telephone switchboard." Most current voicemail systems are computer driven and computer programmable. In order for the individual mailboxes to go to a "generic greeting" the voicemail system would have to be a) turned off and then the phone would have to b) not get answered so that it can c) roll into the phone company's overflow voicemail box. In simpler terms they shut off the voicemail system and quit answering the phones because things were getting too hot for them to handle!
Which leads me to ponder this....suppose that a customer service based industry (say a phone company like Verizon) had done something so totally stupid that they were getting innundated with calls from angry constituents - er customers. Now suppose Verizon, rather than take the calls from the angry constituents/customers, decided to unplug their phones so that they could no longer take calls from said angry customers. Do you suppose that the US Senate would stand idly by?
I'm just sayin'....
"Many Senate office phones were down Thursday morning due to a “modest increase in call volume,” according to an e-mail from the Senate assistant sergeant at arms and the chief information officer.
Opponents of the bipartisan immigration reform bill that stalled in the Senate after a 46-53 cloture vote this morning said foes of the bill had flooded Senate offices with phone calls.
“The Verizon telephone switch[board] serving the Senate is experiencing problems that are being exacerbated by this morning’s modest increase in call volume,” says the e-mail, which was sent at 9:45 a.m.
Verizon is attempting to resolve problems and the voicemail system has been temporarily disconnected from the telephone switchboard.
“Calls will still go to the voice mail system, but callers will receive the generic voice mail greeting (‘You have reached the United States Senate voice messaging service ...’) rather than the voice mail greeting of the person or office being called,” the notice continued."
I've worked in telecommunications on the equipment side of the house and the dial tone side of the house. As such I tend to look for the key words and phrases. In this case the key phrase was " the voicemail system has been temporarily disconnected from the telephone switchboard." Most current voicemail systems are computer driven and computer programmable. In order for the individual mailboxes to go to a "generic greeting" the voicemail system would have to be a) turned off and then the phone would have to b) not get answered so that it can c) roll into the phone company's overflow voicemail box. In simpler terms they shut off the voicemail system and quit answering the phones because things were getting too hot for them to handle!
Which leads me to ponder this....suppose that a customer service based industry (say a phone company like Verizon) had done something so totally stupid that they were getting innundated with calls from angry constituents - er customers. Now suppose Verizon, rather than take the calls from the angry constituents/customers, decided to unplug their phones so that they could no longer take calls from said angry customers. Do you suppose that the US Senate would stand idly by?
I'm just sayin'....
Labels: US Senate
posted by The Lady Logician at
3:08 PM
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