RSS, SMS and the case of the Unknown Issue

On Saturday the server was down for a few hours, so later I wrote to Support at TelPacific, my ISP:

"Can you please put Known Issues into an RSS feed so we can view them as they are posted? It might save TelPacific a lot of annoying phone calls too."

The response was fairly fast, but hardly a reply to my point: "We do have announcement on option 4 on our phones as well as on our website under network status". Do you see a reply there?

I replied: "Yes, I know that. For many users, if the network status page info could be put into an XML file it would be very handy and I'm sure it would reduce the traffic on your phone switchboard."

No reply.

Last night the server was down from early evening until ... well, I don't know when but it still was when I went to bed at 1am. During that time I phoned TelPacific and, you guessed it, there was no announcement on Option 4.

Now I have a better idea. They could use SMS as well as RSS for any known issues. The RSS feed would let us know when an interruption to service was coming. SMS (mobile phone text message) would do the same, but be most useful when the interruption had already occurred.

TelPacific are the guys who, six months after telling me that it was technically impossible to put spam and virus filters on an ISP, put on a spam and virus filter. So maybe I've planted a seed, at least.

To be perfectly frank, while I'm sure they know what SMS is, I have a hunch they don't know what RSS is.

Categories: rss, isp, sms, text, message, support, xml, server, servers, syndicate, syndication, cellphone, mobile, cell, phone