Phone cuts hit Brisbane Airport

[futaris]

Phone cuts hit airport - Technology - BrisbaneTimes - brisbanetimes.com.au

A severed fibre optic cable on the Gold Coast is wreaking havoc across Queensland, shutting down Brisbane Airport operations and leaving hundreds of thousands of Optus phone and internet customers without service.
The systems failure has halted electronic baggage and check-in procedures at the airport's domestic and international terminals, forcing airlines to use manual systems for passengers.
Security has not been affected, however.
An airport spokeswoman said all phone and communications services were down, causing delays of up to an hour.

Some internet services are just coming back up in QLD. iinet are rerouting through PIPE networks interstate link.

 

[NM]

The problem as I understand was actually with two Optus infrastructure failures. One was a kinked fibre cable at Molendinar (Qld south coast) and the other was a hardware failure on the inland fibre path into Qld (not sure exactly where).

The inland path hardware failure was repaired around 12:30pm, restoring most services at that time. The kinked fibre was found to require a section to be replaced and splicing actions commences around midday.

This affected all Optus mobile services in and out of Qld, Optus land-line voice trunks in and out of Qld, and many (possible all??) Optus data services.

 

[Mal]

I do have to wonder why with Optus, a repeater failure near Stanthorpe last night, and a cable cut by excavators this morning causes a near total Queensland outage.

So they had 2 paths, and statistically the chance of both being broken at the same time is small. The chance is small, but it happened. And kept the network down for at least 4 hours.

The small chance of the outage happening, still doesn't explain why there is no NOC type centre in Brisbane or similar that can take over the Optus Network and at least keep Queensland on the air - even though attempts to connect to Southern states would be blocked.

Any ideas how Telstra would have fared in a similar simultaneous cut of all fibre connections to Syd?

 

[NM]

Any ideas how Telstra would have fared in a similar simultaneous cut of all fibre connections to Syd?

Probably the same as any other telco would have fared, and exactly the same as Optus did.

 

[vt]

Any ideas how Telstra would have fared in a similar simultaneous cut of all fibre connections to Syd?

Telstra operate a Global Ops Centre in Melbourne that has a redundant centre in case the primary Ops Centre is compromised. If both Centres are compromised, there are still several hundred offices and centres around the country that house the network/server/devices that can be manned.

This would not help Sydney if ALL connections are cut simultaneously. I would assume Optus operated on a "no single point of failure" model. Just happened that both points of failure coincided.

In Telstra's favour, they have more than 2 points of failure.

 

[NM]

In Telstra's favour, they have more than 2 points of failure.

Just how many more than two paths does Telstra have for services to Qld? All the marketing material I have seen from Telstra shows two paths. But its all very high-level stuff with very little low-level detail. Just lines on a diagram showing a map of Australia. Perhaps this event will prompt more detailed analysis of the telco's infrastructure.

 

[vt]

Just how many more than two paths does Telstra have for services to Qld? All the marketing material I have seen from Telstra shows two paths. But its all very high-level stuff with very little low-level detail. Just lines on a diagram showing a map of Australia. Perhaps this event will prompt more detailed analysis of the telco's infrastructure.

My qoute in relation to more than 2 paths is addressing Mal's Sydney hypothesis. Dont know about QLD.

 

[Homer]

Telstra operate a Global Ops Centre in Melbourne that has a redundant centre in case the primary Ops Centre is compromised. If both Centres are compromised, there are still several hundred offices and centres around the country that house the network/server/devices that can be manned.

If all of Telstra's links to Sydney were severed there would be significant disruption to most of the country because three out of Australia's four main data cables run from Sydney (the other is via Perth).

Interestingly that outage yesterday also affected voice calls between our AKL office and our BNE office, yet both offices use Telstra for voice. Our Optus WAN between BNE and SYD was also down until midday.

 

[JohnK]

The company I work for uses Optus and the call centres were down for most of the morning. Considering that they make most of their money from people calling they were not very happy. Apparently they consider the outage has caused lost business and could possibly pursue Optus for some sort of compensation.

 

[straitman]

The company I work for uses Optus and the call centres were down for most of the morning. Considering that they make most of their money from people calling they were not very happy. Apparently they consider the outage has caused lost business and could possibly pursue Optus for some sort of compensation.

As no doubt will quite a few others. There has already been public mention of a class action.

 

[JohnK]

As no doubt will quite a few others. There has already been public mention of a class action.

I also thought I heard that Optus mentioned that they would be looking at businesses that were severly inconvenienced at offer some sort of compensation.

 

[NM]

Optus and the contractor undertaking the construction work for the Gold Coast City Council are still "debating" who was at fault.

 

[NM]

I also thought I heard that Optus mentioned that they would be looking at businesses that were severly inconvenienced at offer some sort of compensation.

Under the Standard Forms of Agreement (SFA), generally the telco is specifically exempt for consequential damages as a result of a service failure. The best that could be achieved under normal circumstances is a refund of part of the recurring operational expense. So I would think they only way a class action could be successful would be if a court was to find such a limitation of liability clause in the contract was unlawful.

Now that is not to say that Optus may not consider providing some form of compensation beyond what is legally due under the contract terms as a gesture of good will to its customers that were significantly impacted by the service disruption.

 

[JohnK]

Now that is not to say that Optus may not consider providing some form of compensation beyond what is legally due under the contract terms as a gesture of good will to its customers that were significantly impacted by the service disruption.

Some form of compensation may also go part of the way in ensuring the companies that were severely affected do not look for alternate service providers....

 

[Mal]

Probably the same as any other telco would have fared, and exactly the same as Optus did.

From the link posted (about who was at fault and the arguing), I find the following comment by Bill Caelli (possibly the one and same Bill Caelli who heads up the Data Comms School in the IT Faculty at QUT) to basically be the view I have:

Hold on! Hold on! Dear OPTUS - what about the REAL question.

Why did loss of contact - say - South of the border to NSW STOP local connections in Brisbane, Gold Coast etc.???

Isn't the REAL problem that you have no backup in Queensland at all to your TNM system (i.e. it must be that call establishment and charging occurs through you NSW system ONLY?) You see, isn't it a fact that your competition can still offer service even if such a problem occurs since its TNM is distributed with appropriate levels of TNM in Queensland, i.e. even though I cannot call down South etc I can maintain comms in Queensland or locally!!

Tell us the real truth. Arguing about the cable just diverts attention from the backup facilities for your TNM system. That should be THE major concern of our Premier - we should all examine the policy in this critical TNM system (Telecommunications Network Management) area by your principal, SingTel in Singapore!! and insist that you match that, at least.