Test99
Premium
join:2003-04-24
San Jose, CA
 ·DSL EXTREME
 ·InPhonex
| Redundancy > this is a growing concern for many of their customers.
But not to all of them. Back when Packet8 had an all-night outage that was fixed about 20 minutes after the start of the next business day, many of us protested vigorously about their inability to monitor their systems and to respond to customer complaints outside business hours.
Packet8 reassured us that in future they would monitor both their systems and their voice mail outside business hours. And in fact there have been no further long outages. Major problems obviously get fixed even when no one is available to answer the phones. The latest outage may have been the result of scheduled overnight maintenance that did not go well.
I think the real concern is that there isn't enough redundancy in Packet8's systems to prevent a system-wide shutdown when problems occur. For something as vital as telephone service, there should be no single point of failure that can shut down the whole network. Without that redundancy, the best even the most vigilant technicians can do is try to minimize the time to repair.
Over the last year, Packet8 has made great progress in solving their technical and customer support problems. But until adequate redundancy is in place, customers will continue to defect. The $75 cancellation penalty may discourage some customers from leaving, but it will also discourage some prospective customers from signing up. When customers expect 24x7 reliability, nothing less than fully redundant systems will keep them happy.
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Welcome to the 21st century. You'll do fine here. Just don't expect anything to work quite the way it is supposed to... |
