Aren't You Happy You Voted For Baby Bush? (ATC Privatization)

Newps wrote:


Now, every once in a while a substation goes down and nobody notices
(happens once in about 50 years or so). In that case, somebody loses
service after about two days. Think ATC would notice a problem by then?

The generators already come online on automatically, we have one for the
tower itself and one for the radar.

With the phone company, the unmanned substations run from commercial power
(where available) with battery backup. If one goes down, an alert sounds
at local Central Office. If it stays down, someone goes out with a portable
generator to keep the station up. The only time I heard of the system failing
was ten years or so back in Brooklyn (IIRC). They had a power outage, someone
shut off the alarms, but someone dropped the ball and never dispatched
the repair crew. The batteries died after two days, and one section of
the net went dead. Cost the phone company some outrageous sum because of
the loss of service to parts of the Wall Street community.

In the Central Offices, the generators kick in automatically.

George Patterson
The optimist feels that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The
pessimist is afraid that he's correct.
James Branch Cavel