Short version: my NVG589 crashed and the red reset button didn't work, so I located the lid to the battery compartment on the base of the unit and removed it, then reinstalled and plugged it all back in and it worked fine.
I recently had my Internet, phone and TV become completely inoperative. I called AT&T immediately, and they assured me this was very important to them and set up an appointment straight away.
Shortly afterwards, they called on the mobile number I had given them to say there were outages in my area, and so they couldn't dispatch a technician until these outages were rectified. They implied that rectifying these outages would somehow fix my problem.
I doubted this, because I could clearly see that my Motorola NVG589 unit had crashed. The power light was red, and all of the other lights were steady. Not only that, but this situation remained the same even if I disconnected every cable from it, including the power cable (the NVG589 has a battery backup - presumably because without it, you no longer have a phone at all. It also has a note on it saying it is your personal responsibility to make sure this battery is in good shape, so if yours does go flat, be sure you get them to send you a replacement).
Because I had no phone to call them on, I had no alternative but to do the chat thing with their online "chat live now" tool, where they suggested I press the red "reset" button for 15 seconds to fix it. But pressing that did nothing. Ever.
So they said they would send a technician straight away. I waited until 8 that evening, but they never showed up.
Next day, I called them again. No-one ever suggested I take the battery out of this unit. They just kept scheduling appointments, and then a half hour later someone would call the mobile number I gave them to say the appointment was canceled because there were outages in my area. Even though I checked the website and there were no outages in the area ever listed on there.
http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB407223&cv=803#fbid=yjomUHaIxoy
Anyway, after two days of this game of scheduling and canceling appointments, I got the unit on my desk, figured out where the battery was and took it out. All rebooted and started working immediately with no further problems.
Now, I'm not saying you should do this. This is just what happened to me.
