Telephones and communications devices cannot operated. Banks cannot do business. Manufacturing and industry will close down. Outside the United States, the situation is indescribably worse. Most nations have made extremely little if any progress.
Telecommunications is in big trouble.
Unfortunately, they are a day late and a dollar short. But there ARE NO MORE programmers available. Hard data on the real status of the telcos is scarce. Somebody really doesn't want to tell how bad it is. MCI probably 250-300 million lines.