Recommended Resources
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Summary and Comments

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Category: 

Telecommunications

Date: 

1997-10-01 14:44:46

Subject: 

A Warning from a South African Y2K Project Member

Comment: 

This posting on Peter de Jager's forum is useful in showing how institutions deny problems first, then find out if they have any -- and only under pressure.

* * * * * * * * *

Wed, 01 Oct 1997 10:37:35 +0200 From: Alfred Smith To: year2000-discuss@year2000.com Subject: re: Compliance: Telephone Companies

A bland statement that "We will be ok" without any supporting evidence goes against telco experience world-wide. Peter de Jager is quoting astronomic figures for British Telecom and the Swedish telco. These are the only published figures I know of. My company is also having to fund major unexpected expenditures.

I am on the Year 2000 project for the South African telco. Our biggest expenditures by far will be upgrading our exchanges to the latest releases of software and hardware. Our support software (billing, financials, HR and customer support) is also cause for concern. That expenditure will be measured by the millions.

Our previous chief of Application Developnent sent out an e-mail in 1992 requesting all project managers to indicate whether their systems are Year 2000 compliant. They all replied that they were fully compliant. Once evidence was found that major systems were not compliant, he responded by insisting that they were, citing the project managers' e-mails as proof. It took a year and a half of lobbying and a new CIO to get a Year 2000 project going.


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