PLDT Line at Marikina

Our PLDT line at home could not accept incoming calls for almost a week.  It was finally fixed today.  It was a strange problem.  We had no problems calling out, but no one can call in.  Dialing our 425-xxxx number from other landline results to a long silence, then a disconnect tone.  Calling from my Smart phone, I immediately get a "call not allowed" message.  Calling from my Globe phone, I also get the long silence-then-disconnect tone.

During this period, our neighbors don't seem to be having similar problems.  But then, they are all on the older 9xx-xxxx telno series.  Our line came from a different exchange -- hence, it 425-xxxx.

When I called PLDT to report the problem earlier this week, I was told by the 171 operator that they were experiencing a problem with their "server".   I thought that was very strange.  Since when did "servers" have anything to do with plain ol' telephone system (POTS) service.  If it was a TDM switch that went down, you should not be able to accept both incoming calls and make outgoing calls.  And you don't take days to fix a switch.  You just hot-swap some TDM card and that's it. Or if its a physical line problem, you basically send a lineman to go up the telephone pole to fix it.  But this was something else.  A "server"?!

This led me to wonder whether we're on PLDT's Next Generation Network (NGN) which is supposed to be running on their IP-based, "converged" network.  I guess new technology brings new kinds of problems.