Spark cellsite with no redundancy. Fibre internet outage = cellsite outage

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Spark cellsite with no redundancy. Fibre internet outage = cellsite outage

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Linux

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#2701790 4-May-2021 16:34

steve98:

Talkiet:

I personally find that a wildly offensive comment... Conflating a reasonable understanding of the complexities and potential costs with callous disregard for human life is actually not just offensive but an incredibly lazy debating 'strategy'.

N

With apologies to you, I see very little here from the likes of @Linux that shows any regard for the human life being discussed here. Just mockery and pooh-poohing. Nothing constructive from him at all and many others. I'd love some better discussion than just "nah, you're an idiot". Are we geekzone or "nope zone"?

The people that want the back up should go buy a satellite phone

Beccara

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#2701801 4-May-2021 16:52

Where do you draw the line? Does the guy living in a bush shack an hour away from anything get a govt funded n+1 redundant line to his place? What about 10 of them? 100? At some point you have to accept that you aren't in communications range or your communication path isn't reliable and you need to take steps for a backup, EPIRB maybe?

But this isn't a new thing either, Mobile black spots have been around since forever and many small communities are used to being isolated because some winter storm took out the trunk of copper on the town bridge etc etc. You might be getting the response you are getting because of the regular nature of these sorts of complaints, It's only been a few months since we had the RCC Group VoLTE thread etc etc

Most problems are the result of previous solutions...

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quickymart

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#2701809 4-May-2021 17:06

What about if a cellsite covers a certain town with 100 residents, but the footprint extends out to a nearby town with 40, and it's their only link. Would that require redundancy?

Note that everyone in the 100 town can access a landline.

Okay my question is probably not quite clear, or I'm misunderstanding :(

Gordy7

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#2701814 4-May-2021 17:14

steve98:

Linux:

@steve98 Are you willing to pay more for your mobile services so the site can have fibre and Microwave backup?

Yes. If that's what's required. What price do you put on being able to call 111.

There was a 4 hour loss of mobile phone and fibre in Hawkes Bay in March preventing 111 calls and any access to emergency info.

The only option for an emergency would have been to walk or take a car to the nearest emergency service that may have radio communication.

That option was confirmed by Hawkes Bay Emergency Management in an email enquiry.

Gordy

My first ever AM radio network connection was with a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.

sbiddle

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#2701815 4-May-2021 17:15

steve98:

sbiddle:

The question really is how much more you're willing to pay for your services so that every telco in NZ to build redundancy into every part of their network. The costs of this would be eye watering.

Again, you're extrapolating this out to me suggesting that every single cell site in NZ have redundancy. Once again, for those too slow or too deliberately obtuse enough to not understand, I am talking about providing very basic redundancy to cell-sites only where they are the only cell-site servicing a particular community, so that the community can make a call to 111. That automatically rules out the vast majority of cell-sites, particularly those in urban areas.

But that in itself could be a massive job. There are plenty of towns in NZ that may only have a single cellsite covering them. You would need diverse fibre to the town for a start - which in the case of some towns could be millions and millions of dollars. You then need a diverse path from to the cellsite itself, which is also going to cost money. You've then got the significant cost for the likes of 2d/Spark/VF of having to buy redundant paths which in it's simplest way will double the cost of providing service.

Once you've done this you could just as easily have a failure of equipment at the site which takes it down anyway.

There has already been 10+ years of significant discussion in the industry about emergency calling and the impact of the move away from copper.

snnet

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#2701937 4-May-2021 20:59

steve98:

I'd suggest govt subsidise the costs to build it out and those benefitting from it should pay a modest monthly fee to cover it that regular "urban" customers do not have to pay. The secondary link need only be enough to take voice traffic.

I'm not sure it'll happen -- we don't even have a nationally funded ambulance service here... not a lot of point in these small communities calling 111 to have an operator call back and say, sorry, ambulance is 50 minutes away do you still need it (after waiting 30 minutes already) - not an exaggeration, it happens

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michaelmurfy

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#2701940 4-May-2021 21:15

I have 2x SIM cards on different providers because I need redundancy with my job. If my fibre goes down, so does my mobile with one provider but not the other.

But, emergency calls go over any provider. So if you’ve got 2degrees or Vodafone coverage your phone will use that in an emergency situation.

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richms

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#2701941 4-May-2021 21:21

steve98:

Make light of all you like but until now we had copper landlines to dial 111 with which were pretty resilient. Before then, guess you'd just die. Let's not go back to those days. Seriously, this is the infrastructure we've chosen, and these are the flaws and their consequences if they're not designed and delivered right.

They were not resiliant, you just didnt get to see everytime they had an outage because you were not constantly using them all the time like an internet connection.

This outage would also take out coppers ability to do anything since that is fiber back from some place near your house. Probably the same bundle as everything else.

Richard rich.ms

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#2701990 5-May-2021 00:37

Yeah, I don't remember copper being all that reliable either. Bear in mind that (apart from your property losing power) that's supposed to be one of the advantages of fibre - water getting into splice boxes doesn't make much difference.

Bear in mind that 30 years ago, chances are the only comms you had was a single landline on the property, or you had to drive to the neighbour's. In rural areas, it's probably going to be best to get the person in the car and start towards a hospital anyway - the ambulance won't be quick.

I'm also not sure how you could effectively charge rural users for the extra service - no prepay plan asks for an address, and there's no by-region advertising on the on account plans anyway, plus people would invariably put down the address of their cousin who lives in town. You could do it on fixed-line but we're not really talking about improving fixed-line.

The issue is that making cell towers more expensive is almost invariably going to mean fewer get built, because it reduces the benefit to cost ratio. It's generally better to have more, unreliable sites than few very reliable ones.

A comparatively cheap option could be to put a satellite or microwave radio on towers with limited/no backhaul or geographic redundancy, and only allow emergency calls (and maybe SMS, but that would lead to signal bars being displayed) to be sent over it. That way, fewer calls to support, because the network appears to be totally down/'emergency calls only' - not "I have signal but data is broken".

bagheera

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#2702102 5-May-2021 09:59

If you want a reliable way to get someone to your place in an emergency get a Personal Locator Beacon that way you do not need a phone at all.

boosacnoodle

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#2702112 5-May-2021 10:26

bagheera:

If you want a reliable way to get someone to your place in an emergency get a Personal Locator Beacon that way you do not need a phone at all.

This is not really good advice. You're looking at a fairly long delay for the PLB to contact the satellites, RCC to activate their emergency response then to dispatch a local team to attend to you. Being an activation in an urban area while unable to reach you they may not even dispatch anyone as it would look like a false activation.

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bagheera

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#2702118 5-May-2021 10:28

boosacnoodle:

bagheera:

If you want a reliable way to get someone to your place in an emergency get a Personal Locator Beacon that way you do not need a phone at all.

This is not really good advice. You're looking at a fairly long delay for the PLB to contact the satellites, RCC to activate their emergency response then to dispatch a local team to attend to you. Being an activation in an urban area while unable to reach you they may not even dispatch anyone as it would look like a false activation.

if you have no phone, and no other method of contact, then this will be better then nothing, yes if you can make a phone call - then do, but if the phones are down, this should work

yitz

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#2702165 5-May-2021 12:16

This has also happened to Enable in the past, in the below topic there is note of the lack of diversity where GPON is also used for cell site backhaul.
https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=193537

I have found that intact copper can be quite useful. When moving from Chorus UCLL copper to Enable UFB the copper line was left intact and DSL sync retained. On the one or two occasions the Enable UFB circuit was down the intact copper circuit was used successfully to establish PPP broadband back to the ISP BNG for Internet access.

In the past Xtra JetStream was supplied with a backup dial-up access account which could be used at another address or when DSL stopped working.

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#2702180 5-May-2021 12:48

This happened in Auckland as well not to long ago I seem to remember, Big fiber cut that took out cell service in an area?

Linux

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#2702185 5-May-2021 12:59

Fibre cuts / spade fade are a regular occurrence!

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