and taken over by another reliable Bell service.

Mountain Bell->US West->Qwest->Centurylink.

That's how far back I remember.

When I was 8 years old "Ma Bell" was around.

US West was the last incarnation of what was left of the Bell System in its 14-state service area. The degradation began when the notorious Philip Anschutz founded Qwest and acquired US West in a hostile takeover.

Century Link owns what used to be US West before it became Qwest. Telecom is an inbred industry with many twists and turns to ownership and control.

US West was the last incarnation of what was left of the Bell System in its 14-state service area. The degradation began when the notorious Philip Anschutz founded Qwest and acquired US West in a hostile takeover.

Qwest had acquired USWest. USWest was part of the Ma Bell AT&T that was broken up in ‘84.
To this day Century Link operates part of the network that was known as Ma Bell. Some manholes still have Bell Systems labeling in Seattle which is now Century Link property.
Not trying to disagree so much as point out the convoluted path of telco ownership.

BBG agrees with PSPS.

Yesterday, they were never upfront about what was happening other than a "major path" problem announcement some 12 hours after it began. Instead, they continued with their corpo-speak "customers interests....blah, blah, blah", dropped/blocked service inquiries, etc. and even had the nads to air some pre-scheduled adverts declaring how secure their system and customers were - right in the middle of the mess.

Today, with what looks like a fix, we still don't know. Maybe it's still too early for them to determine exactly what happened, or come up with a plausible alternative explanation. Was it a hack? Was it a state coordinated communication attack or dry run for one? Is the DoD requesting to keep this under wraps? Is this a hint of what a major infrastructure attack or military coup might look like? What if other companies like Comcast, etc. were sucked into this at the same time? Why is this not getting more traction from the media?

I'm not running around with a tin-foil hat, waving my arms at a pink sky just yet but I do have the thought that this is perhaps bigger than we're allowing for.