Anyone knows what happened to the fibre in south island?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Anyone knows what happened to the fibre in south island?

Hibino

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#154570 31-Oct-2014 20:40

my fibre connection dropped around 10 this morning and still not back yet. Called them sseveral times but each time their broadband support just kick me to their fibre support and then wait half hour but no one answers the call.

http://www.spark.co.nz/help/servicealert/broadbandservicealert/
It doesn't looks like a small problem according to their status page, but there is no much information regarding the outage, anyone knows what is going on there?

RunningMan

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#1166132 31-Oct-2014 20:42

It got dug up!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/10685604/Fibre-mishap-disconnects-South-Island-web-users

Hibino

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#1166155 31-Oct-2014 21:18

Ok the internet is back.... Now I saw the news...

Dratsab

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#1166163 31-Oct-2014 21:35

A lack of redundancy happened.

richms

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#1166171 31-Oct-2014 21:54

Seems irresponsible of spark to use a single cable to deliver services and have no backup plans in place.

Richard rich.ms

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#1166202 31-Oct-2014 22:45

cut by a farmer

kiwigeek1

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#1166243 1-Nov-2014 02:11

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/farmer-s-mistake-cuts-fibre-internet-lower-south-island-6120201?ref=rss

you think it would be protected better and sign posted or buried real deep? considering one cable only, which can take out the whole web down there

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DarthKermit

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#1166250 1-Nov-2014 03:28

RunningMan: It got dug up!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/10685604/Fibre-mishap-disconnects-South-Island-web-users

Check out the ignorant and abusive comments on that Stuff article.

Sadly, that kind of nonsense is typical of what passes for debate on both Stuff and Herald articles these days.

Whatifthespacekeyhadneverbeeninvented?

chevrolux

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#1166344 1-Nov-2014 10:15

kiwigeek1: http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/farmer-s-mistake-cuts-fibre-internet-lower-south-island-6120201?ref=rss

you think it would be protected better and sign posted or buried real deep? considering one cable only, which can take out the whole web down there

The fact is the contractor would have been fully aware he was digging in an area with buried services. It just plain lazy on his behalf because Chorus will come out and locate those cables for free of he had just bothered to check.

ckc

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#1166382 1-Nov-2014 11:25

About ten years ago when I worked for Telewest cable in the UK, roading contractors severed the main fibre connection into Glasgow. Glasgow lost everything, obviously. There was no redundancy. The fault centre was flooded with angry Glaswegians wanting to know why their services had died. When the cable was finally reconnected, we had 12 hours of crossed lines and misdirected calls. So the fault centre was flooded with angry Glaswegians wanting to know why their calls were going to someone else.

A couple of years before, just before midnight on New Years Eve, the national head end in Knowsley had somehow caught fire. The sprinkler system had activated and the entire place was under 3 feet of water. Fortunately, there was a backup national head end in Birmingham, so there was redundancy. Unfortunately, there was a major equipment failure during the switchover. That meant that Telewest couldn't send or receive communication outside the UK. The fault team, a skeleton crew of about 8 people, were inundated with calls from angry people who couldn't call relatives around the world to wish them a happy New Year.

So you can have expensive redundancy in either cabling or main centres, but sometimes it won't mean anything. For a severed cable, it was up pretty fast. :-P

DarthKermit

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#1166389 1-Nov-2014 11:46

chevrolux:
kiwigeek1: http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/farmer-s-mistake-cuts-fibre-internet-lower-south-island-6120201?ref=rss

you think it would be protected better and sign posted or buried real deep? considering one cable only, which can take out the whole web down there

The fact is the contractor would have been fully aware he was digging in an area with buried services. It just plain lazy on his behalf because Chorus will come out and locate those cables for free of he had just bothered to check.

Hope for his sake that he has good public liability insurance.

Whatifthespacekeyhadneverbeeninvented?

pchs

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#1166399 1-Nov-2014 12:13

Dratsab: A lack of redundancy happened.

Spark do have a redundant physical fibre path (Shared with Chorus) which is why their POTS/DSL etc did not fail (It goes inland Canterbury), but this took out ALL of their UFB & N4L customers in those certain regions so they must only be using a single wavelength/fibre path to backhaul those services north (I.E your quote above for those services must be correct). It would be interesting to know when Spark are planning to build redundancy into their Southern UFB network, its not really fair to blame a farmer for the fibre cut, any number of things (storms, bridges washouts, as happened a few months ago and resulted in the same length outage) would have the same result. A single fibre cut should not take out whole regions of service.

And on that note, Roadwork's/Farmers etc generally cut fibre somewhere around the Country on a fortnightly basis, its just part of running a network that these things will happen