California ISP Association Believes that the 911 Service Outage in Southern California Should be a Wake up Call to the People of California

The California ISP Association (CISPA), the largest state association of Internet service providers believe that the 911 outage Tuesday in Southern California should be a wakeup call for the People of California and their Public Utilities Commission concerning the Verizon / MCI and SBC / AT&T mergers.

Sacramento, CA (PRWEB) October 22, 2005 -- The California ISP Association (CISPA), the largest state association of Internet service providers believe that the 911 outage Tuesday in Southern California should be a wakeup call for the People of California and their Public Utilities Commission concerning the Verizon / MCI and SBC / AT&T mergers.

During the continuing insistence by Verizon and MCI before the California Public Utilities Commission, that by merging, they would create the safest communications system for the State, Verizon’s entire 911 and local phone service in many parts of Southern California melted down, leaving, the elderly, handicapped, those in dire need, and those who can not afford cell phones with no way to call for help.

This is not the first time this has happened, thou it usually goes unreported in the press. A good example of this is the 911 outage in New York in March 2004. This outage was caused by a data error by a Verizon employee. The outage in Southern California is being reported as a Hard Disk Failure. In both cases, the backup systems failed, leaving people in the effected areas helpless.

The California ISP Association believes that we Californians do not need loss of security and lives, because a few utilities, which are not California Companies, are placing massive profits above service and public safety.

Moreover, the 911 outage continues to prove history right, in that bigger is not better. We must all consider that a bigger FEMA, took over 4 days to respond to the largest catastrophic event in the United States; Katrina!

About CISPA:
The California ISP Association, Inc. (www.cispa.org) has more than 125 independent ISP members representing more than 4 million California consumers and businesses. Advocating for the interests of ISPs and their customers since 2000, CISPA provides a unified voice to address legislative, regulatory and consumer issues as well as to support innovation within the ISP industry.

Mark Esser 310-325-5610
Chairman Board of Directors
California ISP Association

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