Can you hear me n--

This small company should have plenty of network bandwidth: three T1 lines with a 99.999% uptime service-level agreement. "Two of the T1s are for data and one is for our voice lines," says a pilot fish on the scene.

"But we've been having recurring issues where all three T1s go down at once, so we lose both Internet and phone service."

And for the past few months, it's always happened the same way. The lines keep cutting in and out, usually just for an hour or two at a time. When they're down, there's no Internet access in or out, and telephone callers get a fast busy signal.

The phone company keeps working on the problem. Each time, the telco calls to let the company know it has fixed the trouble, and that everything is back online and phones are working.

And every time, not long after that, it happens again.

Except the most recent incident. "This last time, they were unable to get through for the follow-up call because our T1s -- and thus our phone service -- had already gone down again after their 'repair,'" fish grumbles.

"So what did they do? Reopen the ticket, noting that things hadn't been fixed? Or simply try calling back later?

"Nope. They closed the ticket and then mailed us a letter telling us that they couldn't get through to us by phone -- but that they wanted to let us know that our service has been repaired."

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