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Technology Stocks : Newbridge Networks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Techplayer who wrote (12792)	8/16/1999 11:48:00 PM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18016

briand." Rotten fish stinks even more now ": ( My comments in bold-italics ). newsalert.com August 16, 1999 17:21 MCI WorldCom moves to soothe network customer rife By Ilaina Jonas NEW YORK, Aug 16 (Reuters) - The head of MCI WorldCom Inc. on Monday moved to make amends with the thousands of customers left in cyberdarkness by the service disruption along its high-speed data network and to placate investor concerns that the problem -- now mostly fixed -- could cut its profit. Chief Executive Bernard Ebbers said customers whose systems were left in the lurch during the 10-day outage would get a service credit of two cost-free days for each day they lost. Ebbers also told reporters during a news conference that the disruption would have little effect on third quarter revenue and would not hurt its profit. listen to this b-zo: he is more interested in allaying WCOM investor fears than taking care of his customers.First words out. "We will see a very, very slight down tick in revenue for the amount of time we were not offering the network," Ebbers said. "The company is still very comfortable with the consensus earnings expectation for the quarter and for the year." Analysts expect it to earn 54 cents per share in the third quarter and $1.97 for the year, according to First Call/Thomson Financial. Its shares shed 1/4 to close at 78-7/16 on Nasdaq, where it was Monday's eighth most active issue. About 3,000 customers use the frame-relay network to send high-speed information from their computers over dedicated private networks they lease from the No. 2 U.S. long-distance phone company. Their monthly bills range from $1,000 to "in the six-figures," Ebbers said. The company did not know if all the customers on that particular network, one of four it operates, experienced problems, he said. MCI WorldCom detected problems with the network on Aug. 5 during routine monitoring work, said Ron Beaumont, president of network services. About four weeks ago, the company installed new software, made by Lucent Technologies Inc. to allow the network to support additional customers and services. On Aug. 13, MCI WorldCom shut down the network, removed the upgraded software and reinstalled the old software, also made by Lucent. I guess the newly hired,defecting,engineers from NN must have screwed up!!! Did they defect from Nn briand or where they fired for incompetence? Also, is this telling me that 3 years of R&D at LU for new software is now down the drain? Like Stratacom? The process, begun Saturday, was completed for domestic customers Sunday afternoon, Beaumont said. As of Monday, the company was working out minor problems with some customers. Less than one-tenth of a percent of customers still have problems, Beaumont said. Customer anger continues, however. For some, two days of free service for each they lost may not be enough. "We're reviewing our legal recourses as well our relationship with them as our provider," said Katherine Spring, spokeswoman for the Chicago Board of Trade. "We're extremely frustrated and hugely inconvenienced." The CBOT, where options and futures are traded on anything from rice to Treasury bonds, said its electronic trading system, which runs on the network, was down 60 percent over the past seven business days and did not return until Sunday evening. About 5 percent of its volume comes from electronic trading, and the outage cost it 200,000 contracts, she said. Spring said the CBOT had told MCI WorldCom it was having network slowdowns before the network failed Aug. 5. briand: I guess even the old software is now passe'.This started way back when.So what's the plan now? "The CBOT has been proactive in dealing with the MCI WorldCom network problems, beginning with my meeting with top MCI WorldCom executives two days before the first outage occurred and subsequent discussions with CEO Bernard Ebbers," CBOT Chief Executive Thomas Donovan wrote members in a letter dated Monday. "There may in certain extenuating circumstances for a customer," Ebbers said. "We'll handle that on a case-by-case basis." I can't believe this b-zo: a customer " has extenuating circumstances" after you screwed up his phones? ".Get a life Benny Meanwhile, engineers from Lucent and its research and development arm, Bell Labs, have not yet identified the problem's source, Lucent spokesman Bill Price said. again brian: this is bad. If you don't know what killed the patient, you are in for a cartload of trouble buddy Ebbers estimated the old network software can support the system for a least another 18 months. Really. You mean just like the new system did? ------------------------ TA

To: Techplayer who wrote (12792)	8/17/1999 2:45:00 AM
From: pat mudge	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18016

"A Lucent spokeswoman said the software in question has been deployed successfully on other networks and suggested that the problem was caused by the installation process rather than the software itself." Brian --- When was that statement given? If you look at the outage chronologically, you'll notice there was confusion at the start and that by today it's clear MCI/WCOM is blaming Lucent entirely. August 11: computerworld.com A Lucent spokesman confirmed the company's engineers are working with MCI WorldCom to solve the problem. "Lucent was involved in a software upgrade that is related to the congestion problems that have been experienced," said the spokesman. But he said he didn't know whether the purpose of the upgrade was related to MCI WorldCom's migration plans. August 11 (WSJ) interactive.wsj.com Lucent spokesman John Callahan said the company has identified the problem with its software and has a team working with MCI WorldCom around the clock. August 13: computerworld.com Lucent spokesman John Callahan confirmed that a bug plagued the software MCI WorldCom purchased from Lucent. But reports surfacing from users had analysts speculating that the problem may have multiple causes. August 13 (WSJ) interactive.wsj.com MCI WorldCom and Lucent said they do not yet have details on what caused the problem. The companies have been working around the clock to solve it, said Lucent spokeswoman Lucia Graziano August 16 computerworld.com Acknowledging that MCI WorldCom has not one, but several, frame-relay networks, Ebbers said that over the weekend MCI WorldCom went back to an older software load on the affected Lucent frame-relay switches. He added that there's "not a significant financial benefit" to integrating the networks. That's something that the new, flawed software was apparently meant to help. The software was designed to scale up the Lucent switches to accept new customers. MCI WorldCom has been planning to center a global frame-relay network around Lucent fast-packet switches, previously known as Ascend Communications equipment. Ebbers and MCI WorldCom network-services President Ron Beaumont didn't detail the exact makeup of the customer set affected by the congestion problems that began Thursday evening, Aug. 5. Beyond saying that the problem originated in Lucent switches, the pair gave contradictory answers as to which customers' services are based on the Lucent platform -- at one point saying the problem affected only international customers, at another point saying it affected international and domestic connections equally. Network World previously reported that the problem appeared to affect legacy WorldCom customers rather than those on the original MCI network based on Nortel Networks' BayStream switches, known within MCI as the HyperStream network. Affected users also included customers with other carriers using network-to-network interconnections with WorldCom, plus customers of many Internet service providers that use frame-relay links to MCI WorldCom's backbone provider UUnet Technologies Inc. Ebbers also laid the blame for the problem -- which resulted in excess network congestion, followed by the loss of some frame-relay network addresses -- squarely at Lucent's feet. "Lucent has accepted the responsibility" for the problem, Ebbers said. "Because we do not write software for this kind of switch . . . it is not within our power" to repair the software, he added. August 16 (WSJ) interactive.wsj.com; The new software, intended to add capacity and service features, has been removed, and no upgrade will be attempted until the source of the problem is pinpointed, said Bernard J. Ebbers, MCI WorldCom's president and chief executive.

To: Techplayer who wrote (12792)	8/17/1999 9:08:00 AM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Respond to of 18016

brian,ZDnet:MCI WorldCom outage: Lucent blamed;accepts responsibility. ( NN asking 26 7/16 on premarket activity ) Software upgrade to blame for 10-day frame relay outage, according to MCI WorldCom. zdnet.com ----------------------------------------------------------- MCI WorldCom blames Lucent software for outage ( same article from ZDnet ) dailynews.yahoo.com Monday August 16 07:38 PM EDT MCI WorldCom blames Lucent software for outage John Rendleman, ZDNet MCI WorldCom Inc.'s 10-day frame relay outage was technically due to a new software upgrade from Lucent Technologies Inc. that the carrier began using four weeks ago, MCI WorldCom officials said today. The intermittent outage, which began Friday, Aug. 5, was finally resolved yesterday, but only after MCI WorldCom shut down the affected portion of its frame relay network Saturday for nearly 24 hours of troubleshooting. Customers left without service during the disruption will receive two days' service credit for every day they were without data links, a credit that in most instances will equal 20 days' worth of free service, said MCI WorldCom President and CEO Bernard Ebbers during a press conference today. During the outage, "we did not always meet our customers' expectations," Ebbers said. Nor did MCI WorldCom fully explain the nature of the outage and its own efforts to resolve the problem. "The fact is that we did not always have those answers, and we still are investigating some of those software issues" that resulted in the network crash, Ebbers said. So far, the company has determined that the outage began as the result of FLAWED LUCENT SOFTWARE being loaded onto hardware on one of MCI WorldCom's four distinct frame relay networks. The one specific network affected is one that MCI WorldCom, of Jackson, Miss., uses to service customers with requirements for international data circuits. That specific network serves 3,000 customers, including America Online Inc. and the Chicago Board of Trade, and consists of 300 different switches and switching nodes. Before the outage, the network had been certified by engineers at Lucent, of Murray Hill, N.J., as meeting all necessary operating parameters for a network of its scope, said MCI WorldCom officials. "Lucent has acknowledged full responsibility and confirmed that it was a software upload problem," Ebbers said, related to a network upgrade intended to allow the network to expand during the next several years to meet growing customer traffic demand. "We have gone back to a software load that we had run successfully for a continued period of time, and we have no plans to risk our network again," at least until the underlying cause of the software error is rooted out and fixed, Ebbers said. -------------------- wht's the next move from LU brian? 8-)) TA --------------------- you said TA, "A Lucent spokeswoman said the software in question has been deployed successfully on other networks and suggested that the problem was caused by the installation process rather than the software itself." You sure NN wants this customer (WCOM)? Brian