Continuing the Telstra theme of the last post, we’ve just been advised by our host that outages beyond the twenty minutes or so of server maintenance noted in this post are due to broader issues with the performance of Telstra’s network.
Customers from numerous Australian ISPs are reporting network outages across the country.BigPond customers reported no international connectivity just before 9PM, while Optus users reported outages and slowness at the same time. BigPond’s support lines are overloaded, and a message says that calls “could not be completed at this time”.
Westnet said it had lost ADSL2+ backhaul to “WA, SA and QLD”, Internode lost its Tasmanian POP and Exetel customers are complaining about severe slowdowns.
It is likely that Telstra has had a major network failure, which has impacted ISPs across the country.
That would also explain why my Telstra broadband has been cutting in and out tonight.
It was really frustrating being a Bigpiddle user tonight, my email, newsgroups and some local sites were ok, but IRC and instant Messaging was up and down like the most recent Galaxy poll
It would be inappropriate to make any linkages between this happening on the same day that Telstra announces major layoffs and the government discusses broadband policy. So I wont.
Me too! I settled down and read a book last night instead of the ‘net. Good to see it back again this morning.
Can anyone explain to me why you would go with Big Pond? I know they own so much of the back end its pretty hard to be immune to their screw ups no matter which isp you are with. But in general some of the other isp’s are so far ahead in terms of, well, everything that I just can’t understand how they seem to get so many well informed customers.
swio,
Bigpond, for broadband, is the default choice because when you ring one of the other providers to get hooked up, suddenly Telstra find all sorts of line issues with your copper and tell you it won’t work. Trust me, I’ve been there. Especially in regional areas. It isn’t nice and it’s hard to catch them at it, but it’s much easier just to ring bigpond and meekly beg for your connection directly.
For my 2c I generally prefer market solutions than statist ones however in important cases ( like health care in the US for example) and BB there may be a case for ramped up govt involvment – picking winners doesn’t get much easier does it? – the formula for any increase in state power and reach MUST be in the context of an overall decrease. BB sought of sustains this healthy trend so I won’t argue this in detail.
The au federal state could easily cut back in porky areas of spending and finance a relatively cheap wifi net over all major pop centers.
They could do this with pilotless drone aircraft like the global hawk.
As I said provided the overall size and power of the state continues its rapid healthy decline then this is one statist measure I believe even a libertarian socialist could support.
Thank youse for yr time here today.
When I switched over to internode the Bigpond marketing dept rang to do a survey and I took great pleasure in politely telling them the main reason I switched (apart from value) was the appalling email they sent to all subscribers with their version of the broadband stoush and their attempts to circumvent the ACCC. I live in a regional area and a churn is quite easy- just don’t tell them to disconnect your bigpond account until after the churn is successfully completed.
swio, I’m a bit of a fossil. I had three other ISPs before I went with Bigpond. I had pleasant but pretty hopeless service from the first three. I’ve had plenty of calls to Telstra/Bigpond over landlines, mobiles and the internet. The service has been invariably excellent. A couple of weeks ago I even spoke to their computer generated voice thing and found it just fine. The only problem is hanging on for a half hour plus before a live person turns up.
I’ve had to do that twice in the last 24 hours, and I can’t see how depopulating the call centres is going to improve matters.
su, from what I hear from the experts, Telstra has a case about the ACCC and what neede to happen was for the Government to cut the gordian not. It’s just that they were a bit confrontational in the end, but against that the Government were in denial mode. They’ve now done that. It’s an ACCC workaround that doesn’t concede Telstra their desire for a backroom deal. It remains to be seen whether Australia gets a good deal, but FWIW I think that is more likely under the Labor approach.