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

steve98

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#284606 4-May-2021 09:42

We live in a Chorus fibre subdivision in Kaiapoi, N Canterbury. In the subdivision there is a Spark 4G cell-site, but no Voda or 2deg coverage.

Whenever there is a fibre outage, not only does the subdivision lose internet / "landline" access, but the cell-site also goes down. To me that indicates that there is a lack of redundancy to the cell tower, which is bad as it leaves the entire community without a reliable way to dial 111. If you're lucky, you can get 1 bar of 3G from a distant cell-site, but the connection drops often.

I have raised this with Spark over the phone, but don't have much faith in it being followed up from previous experiences. Is there anyone from Spark on here who can comment on how "normal" it is for a cell-site to share the same infrastructure as the subdivision's fibre network without redundancy, and can perhaps look at this? Our next door neighbour recently suffered two heart attacks and she is quite scared at the thought of not being able to dial for help.

(Note: we are currently in an outage that begun yesterday at 3:30pm-ish. It impacts the entire subdivision, regardless of service provider, so points to Chorus fibre outage, yet there is nothing on the Chorus outage map).

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#2701562 4-May-2021 10:04

Join the club.

Rely on a Suresignal for VF. Or need to face mecca at the right spot in house for coverage.

If you're near me, I believe the spark/skinny tower in the farm area toward Pines has a small 2D co-share. So should be sweet. 2 spark/skinny units were trucking along all night albeit a little congested at home. It seemed to have been re-routed or hanging on to some further afield. Believe there may be a tower or 2 still with issues.

Imagine they're jointing like crazy through the night. But sure doesn't look flash huh. I too wondered about the elderly who don't have mobiles (or do and also offline) or realise their phone is connected via the ONT in the garage.

At least some of the providers have finally caught up with outtage page. But lots of finger pointing. Unless it's not actually chorus fault, but someone elses they use to transit?

steve98

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#2701583 4-May-2021 10:40

Oblivian:

Join the club.

Rely on a Suresignal for VF. Or need to face mecca at the right spot in house for coverage.

If you're near me, I believe the spark/skinny tower in the farm area toward Pines has a small 2D co-share. So should be sweet. 2 spark/skinny units were trucking along all night albeit a little congested at home. It seemed to have been re-routed or hanging on to some further afield. Believe there may be a tower or 2 still with issues.

Imagine they're jointing like crazy through the night. But sure doesn't look flash huh. I too wondered about the elderly who don't have mobiles (or do and also offline) or realise their phone is connected via the ONT in the garage.

At least some of the providers have finally caught up with outtage page. But lots of finger pointing. Unless it's not actually chorus fault, but someone elses they use to transit?

The cell site should really have a connection to both the Kaiapoi exchange and another one (Rangiora seems most likely) so that if one of the fibre connections is cut it hangs on via the other one.

chevrolux

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#2701586 4-May-2021 10:50

I think you need to think logically about what adding that much redundancy to a cell site really involves, and how often it's actually going to be an issue. Like even if it had two fibre feeds going to different places, they would probably still need to come up the same street/footpath/paddock/whatever so a digger could still take out both "redundant" feeds. Someone more knowledgeable will correct me, but I'm pretty sure some towers have DMR (or similar wireless tech) links for a bit of backhaul, that would be better than two fibre feeds.

I would suggest that if both your UFB and the cell site is down, that's a pretty decent fault, and they would have had jointers there almost immediately to get it sorted. So yea it sucks, but its just the reality of a private business running a network - economics have to be factored in with network design.

Oblivian

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#2701587 4-May-2021 10:54

Not sure if still the case, but it looked like Rangiora was also offline last night as a result of this thing.

As if all coastal has a link from amberley south to chc. And not much else. So when it was snipy snipy, most the eastern townships died unless they used enable backhaul.

Kaiapoi and surrounds has sporadic pockets of Enable, and working cell sites. So of course most the neighbourhood pages are mixed with people thinking the other half is dreaming or simply not knowing what infrastructure their own router uses.

I really love the 'is anyone elses internet going slow'. Yes. Because in this day and age we are all on 128K copper connection still. Not via mobiles, 4G router, WISP, Fibre or Satellite and being that vague covers them all :P

BlinkyBill

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#2701590 4-May-2021 10:57

chevrolux:

I think you need to think logically about what adding that much redundancy to a cell site really involves, and how often it's actually going to be an issue….

So people’s lives should be in danger because it’s not easy or quite expensive?

For something like a cell site, it should be mandatory to have some form of redundancy or else don’t put it in. this is national infrastructure for crying out loud.

Oblivian

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#2701591 4-May-2021 10:57

chevrolux:

I would suggest that if both your UFB and the cell site is down, that's a pretty decent fault, and they would have had jointers there almost immediately to get it sorted. So yea it sucks, but its just the reality of a private business running a network - economics have to be factored in with network design.

Not quite immediately. Some of the updates only seemed to start to acknowledge a break that could then be located about 9pm. Some 5hrs later.

chevrolux

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#2701595 4-May-2021 11:02

BlinkyBill:

chevrolux:

I think you need to think logically about what adding that much redundancy to a cell site really involves, and how often it's actually going to be an issue….

So people’s lives should be in danger because it’s not easy or quite expensive?

For something like a cell site, it should be mandatory to have some form of redundancy or else don’t put it in. this is national infrastructure for crying out loud.

Well then it should be solely owned and operated by the government then. But instead, we have capitalism.

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steve98

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#2701596 4-May-2021 11:04

chevrolux:

I think you need to think logically about what adding that much redundancy to a cell site really involves, and how often it's actually going to be an issue. Like even if it had two fibre feeds going to different places, they would probably still need to come up the same street/footpath/paddock/whatever so a digger could still take out both "redundant" feeds. Someone more knowledgeable will correct me, but I'm pretty sure some towers have DMR (or similar wireless tech) links for a bit of backhaul, that would be better than two fibre feeds.

I would suggest that if both your UFB and the cell site is down, that's a pretty decent fault, and they would have had jointers there almost immediately to get it sorted. So yea it sucks, but its just the reality of a private business running a network - economics have to be factored in with network design.

If the cut is very close to the cell tower, yup I get redundancy via two different fibres could be impacted. But if the cut was further away (e.g. right by the one exchange it connects back to) it would still be working if also connected back to another exchange. Yes, wireless backhaul would be just as good and more economical no doubt. But there needs to be SOME form of redundancy. In the 8 years I've lived in this subdivision I can say that every time there has been a fibre outage impacting broadband it has also taken out the cell tower so that points to them all relying on common infrastructure which is not good network planning.

Oblivian

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#2701611 4-May-2021 11:36

VOIP sounds pooh. But should be back up now - poss on rate limited.

tripper1000

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#2701612 4-May-2021 11:38

BlinkyBill: For something like a cell site, it should be mandatory to have some form of redundancy or else don’t put it in. this is national infrastructure for crying out loud.

You can have good or you can have cheap - most people choose cheap, the 2nd most people choose coverage. How many people go with the provider with best redundancy when choosing a telephone company? No many, so it isn't a market demand and the TeCo's don't cater to it. You can't have uninterruptible and cheap, particularly in challenging geographies like NZ and with our low population density.

A quick google shows this to be pretty "normal" with lots of incidents in the last 5 months affecting more people than this outage.

You can always get Starlink if it is that important.

Linux

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#2701617 4-May-2021 11:48

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

steve98

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#2701626 4-May-2021 12:02

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.

boosacnoodle

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#2701630 4-May-2021 12:10

This is a bit strange to me given that Kaiapoi is right on SH1.

tripper1000:

You can always get Starlink if it is that important.

And connect via.... Invercargill - quite possibly the furthest you could get from any international fibre links.

steve98

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#2701631 4-May-2021 12:13

Oblivian:

VOIP sounds pooh. But should be back up now - poss on rate limited.

Yup looks like it's rate limited right now. I'm at work in chch on a 200Mbps link at the moment, just VPN'd to my home router and speedtest result is 5Mbps.

Linux

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#2701639 4-May-2021 12:39

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.

@steve98 So every single cell-site should have Fibre and Microwave backup?

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