AT&T processed 1.5 million calls in the first five minutes of 2000 on the East Coast in a traffic surge experienced by most of the major telephone carriers.

Network congestion, not Year 2000 computer glitches, was the only problem faced by the hundreds of telephone company employees working on the first night of the new year. Even that congestion, though, wasn_t enough to bring their systems down. Of AT&T_s calls, just one didn_t go through on the first attempt, said Mike Granieri, a spokesman for the company that controls about 60 percent of the long-distance market. Its wireless network operated without any significant problems. The major phone companies including AT&T, Bell Atlantic, MCI WorldCom and Sprint spent more than $3.6 billion over 4.5 years to evaluate and fix computer programs. They said they were 100 percent ready for Y2K in September. Wireless telephone networks took the hardest hit in the first minutes of 2000 as revelers called friends and family, company spokesmen said. Bell Atlantic, for example, said it experienced "significant blockage" in the first 15 minutes after midnight, meaning calls could not be completed.