The telco is tapping its last backup before the database glitch to restore all saved or pending messages (which weren't available while the service was on the blink Wednesday and Thursday). That's presumably the big-ass file that Verizon couldn't get to run fast enough.
With all the alleged mirroring, snapshotting, and continuous protection at work, it's a little surprising to see survey results that backups take on average nine hours, according to this survey. Then again, that's for tape backup, and the survey was done by a vendor of IT support services, giving the findings that Nostradamus, end-of-days tone.
I doubt tape was the problem in Verizon's case. I'm also a bit dubious over how much incidents like these will hasten the rush to hosted backup services. Seems like the bigger driver for EMC's Mozy service (for which Verizon will be a reseller) is the convenience from offloading responsibility for a major function of the data center.
Reliability's great -- but it's even better when it comes with speed.