[eric]

We received a notice from one of our data center providers that they will be ceasing all operations on August 31 - 2 days from now. A significant portion of PhoneGnome operations are hosted by this provider and it is unlikely that we can rehost these services in only two days.

As a result, some PhoneGnome customers will experience service interruptions; we request that you remain patient as we work to restore PhoneGnome services. We will do our very best to minimize service interruptions, but we request that you refrain from calling or sending email as that may distract from our service recovery efforts.

We apologize for any inconvenience this service interruption may cause you. For further information, please use the following web forum area:

http://www.phonegnome.com/support/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&p=1166

[eric]

Follow-up Story:

PhoneGnome Customers Can Breathe Easy - Voxilla

[PhoneGnome]

With 32 hours of effort on the part of our engineers, technicians, and with the help of terrific partners like Hurricane Electric, the net effect of this migration was an approximate 13 minute outage from the customer's perspective. Nearly a non-event.

We will let things run for a while to ensure all is working well, and then send a follow-up email notice to PhoneGnome customers, probably later today.

Thanks for everyone's patience and support.

[kalimark]

This illustrates the same problem that many second and third rate VoIP providers have (and even some of the providers that consider themselves first rate have those problems). The problem usually is complete disregard for the most basic safety precautions and complete lack of any basic redundancy.

It is just basic stupidity that PhoneGnome or any other company (especially any company with "phone" in its name) does not have basic redundancy build-in. The cost are miniscule or none at all. I can have 10 or more providers for my own usage (I almost never use them all myself at the same time, but I keep them just for those occasions when one goes out of business or another one has an outage or any other problem). If I can do it (and every other even novice VoIP user can easily do it) why is it that a provider can not do it?

Why a customer of PhoneGnome (the same goes for a customer of companies as diverse as Verizon, VoiceStick, or Skype) has to experience problem and be even notified every time PhoneGnome can not route a call due to third party issues if such issues can be easily and completely eliminated. Ultimately, it is PhoneGnome that is responsible for its internal business and it should take responsibility by setting up simple redundant circuits and providers so no matter what happens to any one of its business partners or providers the call goes through.

[eric]

Redundancy is a good goal, but even the ILEC's don't have redundant CO's and they justify adding all kinds of expenses in the rate base.

All VoIP providers should strive for redundancy, but redundancy is hardly free or with miniscule costs.