Since you said operational issues, instead of just outage...
How about MCI Worldcom's 10-day operational disaster in 1999.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9908/23/network.nono.idg/
How not to handle a network outage
[...]
MCI WorldCom issued an alert to its sales force, which was given the
option to deliver a notice to customers by e-mail, hand delivery or
telephone – or not at all. After a deafening silence from company
executives on the 10-day network outage, MCI WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers
finally took the podium to discuss the situation. How did he explain the
failure, and reassure customers that the network would not suffer such a
failure in the future? He didn't. Instead, he blamed Lucent.
[...]
