"In late February, the Sunbury Mills sanitary sewer pump failed." Okay, it's not the greatest opening line in world literature, but hang on. There's a reason for it.

As the Sunbury (Ohio) News reported, "The real failure was not so much the pump malfunction, but the failure of an auto-dialer system that should have warned wastewater plant supervisor Rich Felton that the pump was down."

So due to the auto-dialer failure and lack of a backup pump, the News reported, "raw sewage backed up into the basements of three nearby homes."

Council member Dave Linnabary, who also chairs the village Services Committee that oversees the wastewater treatment plant and sanitary sewer system, told the News that new auto-dialer testing procedures are being enacted.

We should certainly hope so, although it's too late for Sunbury Mills resident Natalie Cox (News - Alert), who now has a $2,500 bill just to clean the basements and the loss of personal items in her home totaling $14,500.

More reliable auto-dialer systems are available, fortunately. As TMCnet's Susan J. Campbell wrote recently, the Tele-Emergency Auto Dialer is used much like other commercially sold "Life Alert" or "Life Line" services, "only is offered at a lower price point and delivers more benefit. If an individual cannot get to the phone during an emergency, they simply press the emergency button on the lanyard around their neck." 

This device uses auto dialing technology to be activated with the push of a button. A prerecorded message provides name, address and medical history over the phone line to a dispatch center.

And as TMCnet's Shamila Janakiraman reported earlier this year, specializing in the provision of hosted cloud telephony technology, auto dialer and voice broadcast provider CallFire launched its hosted interactive voice response product allowing "rich customer interaction without the presence of live call center representatives."

This feature isn't common among telephony applications, and will be suitable for the SMB market as well. And it should perform much better than the sewage plant system.