Aptela experienced a service interruption that impacted a small portion of our customers who route internet traffic via AT&T. AT&T is not an Aptela partner but provides the backbone for many of our customer’s internet service providers. Service has been fully restored and this email serves to report on the root cause and steps taken to achieve resolution.

At approximately 6:00pm EDT on July 8, 2009, we experienced a service interruption due to an apparent unauthorized change made on AT&T's backbone resulting in traffic bound for Aptela not to be routed properly.  Upon identifying the issue, AT&T reported the problem was resolved at approximately 10:00pm EDT. All internal and customer tests indicated that the issue was resolved. All customers who opened trouble tickets received updates via email.

At approximately 8:00AM EDT this morning, we discovered that AT&T’s fix was not sufficiently comprehensive resulting in further interruptions to Aptela-related traffic passing through their network. The customer impact was loss of audio and phones not registering. We posted updates on the “My Account” page and “Support” page of our website throughout the morning. All customers who opened trouble tickets received updates via email.

Our engineers uncovered the issue and worked diligently to escalate within AT&T’s network operations center for resolution. Service was restored at 11:30am EDT.

Our executives are in discussion with senior management at AT&T to determine how this service interruption occurred and the steps that A&T will take to prevent a similar incident in the future. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused your business.