XT on 60 minutes

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Behodar

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#308615 18-Mar-2010 08:58

There's also a "mini-review" of the show here on NBR. That article has also taught me that RNCs are significantly cheaper than I thought they were ;)

Edit: Price changed in article from US$12 to US$12 million.

sinner

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#308628 18-Mar-2010 09:21

It was utter rubbish.

I was hoping for some focus on A-L and why they were picked to do the network. No, they are not a "crap" company, but what is the link between the Telecom board and A-L and was the tender for the building of the network truly open?

Why was there no real focus on the RNC? Why is Christchurch failing and not Auckland? Are they not the same hardware and set up?

Global talk about the "cock up"? Really? The network outage in NZ is being talked about globally? They didn't provide any clips or news items from overseas to back that claim up.

The focus on whether or not the network is fixed. It's being fixed. It's not fixed? It's being fixed. Well, what do you want? Has there been a 5th outage? As Dr Reynolds said, it's being fixed! We will know when it's fixed when there has been no more outages.

The executive in Barcelona (at a device conference) while the outage was occuring. So what? He is a device executive. What do you want him to do with a network issue? Bring him back for him to do... what?

How about some focus on the public reaction to the outage and our reliance on mobile phones. Yes, the outage is bad. No denying. Abusive calls into callcentres and THAT twitter page? Is this how the public reacts to service disruption? What about other infrastucture. Where's the outcry when power is lost in Auckland?

Anyway, just my personal opinions and not representative of Telecom

hellonearthisman

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#308632 18-Mar-2010 09:35

It was more like a bit of Telecom spin than an in-depth report from 60 Mins.

60 mins also stole content used in their story. http://twitter.com/FreeChrisKeall/statuses/10612511915

PhoneChick

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#308638 18-Mar-2010 09:54

sinner:

Global talk about the "cock up"? Really? The network outage in NZ is being talked about globally? They didn't provide any clips or news items from overseas to back that claim up.

The focus on whether or not the network is fixed. It's being fixed. It's not fixed? It's being fixed. Well, what do you want? Has there been a 5th outage? As Dr Reynolds said, it's being fixed! We will know when it's fixed when there has been no more outages.

The executive in Barcelona (at a device conference) while the outage was occuring. So what? He is a device executive. What do you want him to do with a network issue? Bring him back for him to do... what?

How about some focus on the public reaction to the outage and our reliance on mobile phones. Yes, the outage is bad. No denying. Abusive calls into callcentres and THAT twitter page? Is this how the public reacts to service disruption? What about other infrastucture. Where's the outcry when power is lost in Auckland?

You said exactly what I was thinking when watching the show!! No investigating from 60 minutes = bad reporting

robjg63

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#308641 18-Mar-2010 10:09

corksta: I thought Paul Reynolds was very open about everything, which he has been all along anyway, but the journalist wasn't really interested in the cause of the issue, she was more interested in trying to slam him down and getting him to comment on the company being arrogant, the culture inside Telecom, not spending enough on the network.

It was hardly investigative journalism and I got more out of watching the clips from their own filming done on the day. I was hoping they would have probed more into each individual outage and more about what they've done to fix things and how those fixes will prevent further problems.

Then again I guess that's not as "exciting" or as dramatic as just accusing him and the company of being useless and getting comment on that.

+1 well summed up.

I think the primary thing that Telecom has done wrong is treated Alcatel Lucent like a 'partner' when in fact they are a customer of AL and AL have let them down. I think they have learnt that now.

The thing that I took is that Telecom have sucessfully installed 2 more RNCs and that while they maybe dont know the absolute reason for a couple of the outages, this has most likely fixed the issue - Fingers X'd. I believe TC were told the existing RNCs would more than handle the current load (they didnt) and they could bring more on later. TC were dropped in it big time.

What the interviewer said was "Telecom has still to spend another couple of hundred million to fix the problems - thereby implying everything is still crap. BIG FAIL 60 MINUTES.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

nate

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#308667 18-Mar-2010 11:02

Anyone else notice Paul Reynolds drop the "shat happens" when briefing the key people in Dunedin before the media conference? Would've loved to have seen that included in the official statements.

old3eyes

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#308729 18-Mar-2010 13:23

sinner: It was utter rubbish.

Global talk about the "cock up"? Really? The network outage in NZ is being talked about globally? They didn't provide any clips or news items from overseas to back that claim up.

Didn't see any mention of these outages on any tech news groups including mobile any where that i look.

Regards,

Old3eyes

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ahmad

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#308739 18-Mar-2010 13:44

Crap story. Crap journalism.

But I do (truly) like the Doctor.

gingereejit

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#308844 18-Mar-2010 17:06

Bit of a poor effort of a beatup by 60mins

Trying to attack supposed TNZ arrogance, rather than a true expose of the issues with the network.

Having a go becuase TNZ executives where at a conference. It was the mobile world congress in Barcelona for goodness sake (which I noticed 60mins failed to mention). The biggest mobile technology conference of the year, and I think Paul explained quite well why it was appropriate for his executives to be there.

No evidence to back up the claim of the global exposure of the outgaes in NZ.
No evidence to back up the claim that it will cost "hundreds of millions" to fix.

There seems to be a thing with the media these days where the focus seems to be trying to put the people who are being interviewed on the spot, as if making the interviewee look "awkward" regards there question is the goal - rather than getting to the core of the topic at hand, as Radio National's interview with Ben Verwaayen (ALU CEO) had a similar approach IMHO.

It's almost if all current affairs journalists have used Jeremy Paxman's interview with Michael Howard in 1997 is the as a baseline for their own style (ie repeat question ad infinitum until time runs out!)

exportgoldman

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#308867 18-Mar-2010 18:16

I agree with everyone here, the show was a mashup of previously known information with some bad journalism and a few good screenshots of the queue management which was great to see on HD freezeframe :) I always love having a look at screen grabs of internal systems.

The one thing which I'm suprised 60 minutes didn't click onto is that the Telecom NOC is also run by AL, so it seems there is no part of Telecom's network which actually has Telecom tech's running it. Everything is external contractors...

Tyler - Parnell Geek - iPhone 3G - Lenovo X301 - Kaseya - Great Western Steak House, these are some of my favourite things.

webwat

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#309161 19-Mar-2010 15:08

Actually yes it would have been interesting perspective to compare against the big power outage in Auckland CBD, but even better would be to ask whether the 111 outage was related to the same culture issues or just a red herring.

But none of the media has ever asked why experts say that 4 RNCs should have been running. They are supposed to be redundant. They should have had all 4 RNCs going before the service finished beta testing.

But another question: if the first outage was caused by a mass of logins from a few cell sites coming back online simultaneously, isn't that a software fault with the RNC? Are Alcatel RNCs supposed to fall over when they get overloaded? If they haven't fixed the root cause, then having redundant controllers simply hides the problem whenever the RNC falls over again. Until eventually the backup RNC falls over as well, because it can get hit by the same issue as the first one.

Time to find a new industry!

webwat

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#309163 19-Mar-2010 15:12

exportgoldman:
The one thing which I'm suprised 60 minutes didn't click onto is that the Telecom NOC is also run by AL, so it seems there is no part of Telecom's network which actually has Telecom tech's running it. Everything is external contractors...

Which means Telecom didn't really have a choice of going with Alcatel, unless they wanted lots of confusion or duplicated NOC teams. Actually I dont see that it would have been hugely difficult, they still manage to support legacy Nokia equipment and the NEC exchanges.

Time to find a new industry!

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