The Web site of the Federal Trade Commission — the government agency that in
some ways regulates e-commerce — was back up about noon EDT today after a
power failure at the building in Washington, DC knocked it off-line for hours.
A spokesperson for the FTC told InternetNews.com that the ftc.gov Web site was down because of a power
disruption at the main FTC building at 600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.
It was unclear when the site went down, but the power apparently failed
sometime during the night.
A spokesperson for Potomac Electric Power Co. said crews were on the scene
and investigating the outage.
In addition to the FTC site, the agency’s internal network, including e-mail
systems, were also affected, leaving the satellite offices without e-mail and
network services.
The spokesperson said PEPCO was doing switch maintenance work in the area
Wednesday evening, but that work should not have affected the FTC building.
Other government sites apparently were unaffected.
The power failure appeared to be an isolated incident and unrelated to the
kind of rolling blackouts that have been plaguing Silicon Valley and the rest
of California as prices for electricity have soared on the West Coast.
Still, this sort of spot power failure is not all that uncommon. Last week
about 50 companies, including several dot coms, that rely on Exodus
Communications Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif. for uninterrupted power lost
electricity when Exodus suffered a power disruption of its own.
A spokesperson for WorldCom/Uunet, which provides Internet connectivity
services to the FTC, said that the government Web site is not co-located at a
WorldCom facility. If it were, the site would have been protected by
uninterruptable power supply systems (UPS), the spokesperson said.
The FTC monitors complaints about Internet retailers, and just yesterday it
was disclosed that online retailer Egghead.com Inc. may face a
fine for allegedly failing to inform some customers that their orders would
be delayed during the December holiday shopping season, according to
published reports.
