Johnson attributes Intellution's and UniFirst's problems to a lack of fiber. To connect a site to frame relay, Verizon usually must establish a connection between the site's local central office and the nearest Verizon central office with a frame relay switch. In the cases of UniFirst and Intellution, there's no available fiber to establish the intercentral office connections, Johnson says. Verizon can typically provision a frame relay circuit in 15 days, he adds.
Verizon will be unable to obtain additional fiber until next year, he says.
As for the confusion over the installation dates, Johnson says the original dates would have come from a sales representative reading numbers off a spreadsheet. Verizon would not have known there was a problem until it went to establish the intercentral office connections, he says.
Johnson says the cause of the capacity shortage is demand.
"There is tremendous demand for everything that's high-capacity these days," he explains. "And then there's dial-up, DSL. There's more data traffic than the voice lines were designed for."
Johnson says the Intellution and UniFirst cases are the only problems he knows about.
But AT&T spokesman Gary Morgenstern says AT&T sales representatives in the Massachusetts area have had trouble provisioning other customers because of Verizon delays. He declined to name specific customers.
