[AusNOG] Telstra mobile issues again?

Wed May 23 08:36:35 EST 2018

I’m on a personal Telstra plan with an iPhone 8 Plus. It’s my choice to use Telstra because I’m either on call or backup to the oncall and I selected Telstra due to its “premium” mobile network. It’s not just coverage but actually reliable data speeds. 

Throughout the Telstra outage my phone never went SOS only, does this mean my phone wouldn’t have been able to fail over to another network for 000 / 112??? I was unable to make outbound calls and my incoming calls all went to voicemail. My guess is I would be unable to call 000/112 and in an emergency hopefully someone is on another carrier 

This happened just outside my office building yesterday, if Telstra was out on Tuesday instead of Monday what’s your chances? Would the Telstra outage have affected emergency services once they arrived??

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/woman-seriously-injured-after-being-hit-by-bus-in-brisbane-cbd-20180522-p4zgo5.html 

Telstra seems to publicly dismiss its outages as minor or “affected a small number of users” meanwhile people are mentioning it nation wide. The outages have been higher then usual over the last 6 months but I’ve got 18 months left on my contact. 

At work we use an Optus evolve service and have 1-3 fixed voice or data outages on a good month lasting 30-90 mins to half a day or longer. Business is in contract until 2020, it’s now just accepted as a normal thing and phones are too hard so “thinking about what to do about it” isn’t as simple as that. (We did get a second internet service so I guess we did think about it on the data side). 

On the other hand we have a legacy Telstra frame relay service, it’s had 100% uptime for as long as I can remember. Old technology just seems so much more reliable. 

Tonight I’m picking up a Amaysim to use as a backup on their $10/mo plan. It’s cheap and what Telstra recommends I don’t do! 
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/telstra-warns-users-off-cheap-sims-491236 

And 4G was unavailable this morning at Central station in Brisbane with minimal to no 3G data throughput. Thanks Telstra. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On 22 May 2018, at 11:11 pm, Joshua D'Alton <joshua at railgun.com.au> wrote:
> 
> If a business, regardless of size, isn't looking at these Telstra outages (or any of their provider outages really) and getting the ball rolling on what to do about it..... well, not good.
> 
> The smallest business has the ability, even if not the intelligence/motivation/smarts/etc, to evaluate what they rely on and the level of continuity they require. Literally even just reading this thread should be enough to raise the appropriate questions, such as "why do you think something like "they pay for a service. It probably isn't the cheapest, but they pay for it anyhow because the name brings an element of trust" means zero downtime?"
> 
> It is interesting that there has been a shift between services you could totally rely on (say Telstra in the 90s), to those you can't even with a tight SLA (Telstra now..), but the reality is those considering a bulletproof system in the 90s still had a backup incase of a Telstra outage.
> 
> But back to the OP, Telstra dropping 000 should be hounded like no tomorrow. People think power gas is essential services, but 000 is actually essential. Is anyone monitoring the ACMA or whoever responses to these events and the lapsing of SLAs?
> 
>> On 22 May 2018 at 22:22, Karen Hargreave <karen at iamunique.net.au> wrote:
>> Ok, devils advocate side to the rant..
>> 
>> Firstly, let me say that I am not against your idea in the sense that there is definitely a need for small businesses to be more agile. 
>> 
>> Ok, that said. Yes, one could think that a small business could be more agile, but then, they pay for a service. It probably isn't the cheapest, but they pay for it anyhow because the name brings an element of trust. Small businesses generally don't have the ability to reach into a draw and pick up a sim from another provider just to keep them on the air. Even if they can, how do they tell their customers of a phone number change? Who do they tell? Yes, a solution could involve other types of voice services to be contacted on, but then there is the question, if part of what they are paying for is trust in the brand, then well...  you know where I am going.
>> 
>> Oh, and food for thought, almost literally...  try working at a food delivery place when the competitor has no eftpos...  yes, they do lose money :) and customers :) 
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>>> On 22 May 2018, at 9:49 pm, Jason Leschnik <jason at leschnik.me> wrote:
>>> 
>>> The Media and the Public's response to this is a little disheartening. Before I got into the world of networking I'd be part of the masses on WhingePool ragging on the ISPs. The more I see behind the curtain of the industry I sympathise that the problems we face are large and complex. Most people struggle to perform simple "adult" functions but yet believe that a large insanely complex organisation with many moving parts isn't just as potentially flawed is baffling. So many comments on Twitter with business owners blaming Telstra for their "insane financial loss" due to the outage but in saying that, isn't their lack of BCP nothing more than the same thing Telstra saw if not worse? A small company is much more agile to create a simple BCP for events like this. 
>>> 
>>> /Rant 
>>> 
>>>> On 21 May 2018 at 10:37, Ross Wheeler <ausnog at rossw.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I'm seeing (mobile) services - voice and data - down or intermittent in multiple areas for the last 40 minutes or so.
>>>> 
>>>> Can't find anything mentioned about it - am I just lucky enough to have a significant proportion of my telstra services go titsup all together, or is there some wider issue?
>>>> 
>>>> (None of my services with other carriers seem affected at this stage).
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