At the mercy of careless individuals.

Welcome to the self storage blog, where we consider the self storage business.

We had some unforseen challenges last night and this morning due to the carelessness of an excavator.

Sprint lost all its T1 lines in a large portion of the state of Missouri last night, but we are 80% recovered and should be 100% recovered any minute now.

According to the story that was told to us, last night a contractor laying water lines near Jefferson City Missouri cut the main bundle of cables that connects Sprint’s T1 lines for a big portion of the state of Missouri. So Sprint clients like us with T1 lines were completely S.O.L. We all lost phone and data service. This is the worst case scenario that is completely out of our control. All our redundancies would have come into play under just about any other scenario. The good thing about this kind of crisis is that there are some very big customers Sprint needs to take care of.

The lines that went down served the state government offices, the National Guard headquarters and some very large commercial customers. Our usage is teeny, tiny compared to some of them. So it is nice to have that kind of clout on your side when a large company like Sprint needs to get motivated.

Most of the repair was completed last night. The fix is not 100 % completed, but we had about 80% of our lines working by 10:00pm last night. We are transferring the paths of the remaining lines so they will be functioning any minute now. Thank you for your patience.

I know we are all glad we will not be receiving the repair bill that the excavator will be receiving from Sprint. You would think contractors have all heard enough horror stories like this that they would be more careful. The state of Missouri spends tons of money educating homeowners and contractors about these kinds of issues. You can usually get a utility line spotter to come out to a work site on the same day you call.

A few years before PhoneSmart opened a contractor cut data lines that served the entire downtown portion of Columbia, Missouri, our home town. It took two weeks to completely restore phone and data service and the contractor paid a huge fine. About one month after we opened an excavator laying fiber optic cable cut the T1 line that runs our side of the road. It didn’t take long for Sprint to wire around the break, but again, the contractor paid a huge fine.

Our redundancies can handle the local cable loss, but a state-wide event is beyond our capabilities. Perhaps when we grow to the next level and move some of our reps and some ouf our equipment into the virtual realm, we could just swing all our lines to our reps in other states.

I want to thank all our clients who have been patient and understanding during this difficult time. It is busy season and neither you nor I want to miss a single revenue opportunity.

thanks,Tron

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

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