September 22, 2003—AT&T recently conducted a three-day network disaster recovery in Boston. The exercise was designed to test and evaluate how well the company can respond to a simulated disaster that destroys a Boston telephone switching center. The company’s target response time to restore systems is seventy-two hours.
In the last ten years, AT&T has invested more than $300 million in its network disaster recovery program. Since 1992, the network disaster recovery team has been activated thirteen times in response to disasters, including restoring service after south Florida’s devastating Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and after the Northridge, Calif., earthquake in 1994. The team also mobilized to provide recovery services following the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001.
