AT&T Co’s Manhattan telephone switching disaster that started late Tuesday afternoon (CI No 1,762) is being indirectly attributed to the company’s economy drive: it switched over to its own back-up generators after Consolidated Edison Corp – Con Ed, the New York electricity company – requested it to ease the demand for power at the peak of the unseasonably high temperatures under a plan that gives large users a lower tariff if they agree to such requests; turns out that the rectifiers in its power supplies blew when it switched over, and the system defaulted to its emergency batteries; the audio and visual alarms that signal that this has happened seem to have been ignored, and six hours later, the batteries were flat and the tandem switching centre in lower Manhattan went dark; some critics say the real problem lies in Con Ed’s inability to meet demand for electricity in New York.
