A small business client of mine recently had their T1 line go out, and their DSL backup was dead, too.  EIGHT calls to AT&T and a tech visit later, we determined that there was a fault in a switch a few blocks away (T1), and an administrative problem (DSL) that our sales rep can't make go away.  

Here's a great conversation:

TECH: Oh; here's the problem.  The switch (or router, I forget) up the street is giving a bazillion errors.  I'll put in a request for it to be serviced.

ME: When did the errors start?

TECH: A couple of months ago.

ME: You don't monitor your network equipment for faults?  Isn't someone supposed to notice this?

TECH: Oh, no: we just respond to customer complaints.

Now, the tech only came out because I insisted there must be something they could do, because this client's T1 had experienced 4 outages in 2 months.  That's 4 "customer complaints," just from me!  Even so, no-one thought to do any kind of diagnostic.  

The tech was about to take down the DSU/CSU to do 2 hours of diagnostics on the equipment in the client's office, when I stopped him.  He agreed it didn't make any sense to take down a 24-hour operation whose backup Internet access was still out, given the huge number of faults from the upstream box, but it was on his work order, so he was about to do it anyway.

Decades ago, I had Mindspring dial-up Internet access, and THEY were good about monitoring their network equipment, for their customers paying $20 a month!  But AT&T can't bother to do network monitoring for T1's?  I can't wait until Clearwire or someone else like that comes to town.

As far as I know, 3 months later, the DSL still isn't working there.  I have heard the owner shouting at the AT&T rep (on the phone) from the next room, but she can't straighten out whatever administrative snafu has it turned off.