Telecom XT announcement regarding compensation for outage 2010 01 27

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Telecom XT announcement regarding compensation for outage 2010 01 27

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drajk

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#295525 2-Feb-2010 20:17

kiwiscoota: I'm sure there will be some that are satisfied with Telecoms' offer of compensation and in my case as a Vodafone user, I was not greatly inconvenienced, BUT I was inconvenienced and did waste valuable business time trying to contact clients on the XT network.

And how about XT and NON-XT customers North of Taupo who paid for calls to XT customers south of Taupo because they went to voicemail, people who sent SMS which were billed but never received, as someone else has said people who are generally north of Taupo but were travelling in the South at the time etc... etc...

As others have said it would be impossible to come up with a compensation package which in every case equally and fairly applied compensation to those affected.

In my opinion however Telecom would have been better off in the longrun offering the prepay $10 or $20 credit to all XT prepaid customers because many customers irrespective of where they are based will have lost confidence in XT's reliability - while $10 or $20 will not restore the faith it would make some customers happy and get some of them talking positively about XT.

It must be remembered that the real cost of $10 prepaid credit to Telecom is really significantly less than $10 because (i) as long as everyone doesn't use it at once infrastructure is required whether that person uses it or not and (ii) if the customer plans to leave Telecom anyway there is no loss on an anticipated future topup. Also the 6-month expiry on prepaid means that those customers who stay with Telecom have to use the credit or if they wish to retain it they need to put their own money in regularly anyway.

In terms of the on-account customers the cost to Telecom is more genuine as the waiving of plan fees is money which definitely would have been paid by customers and unlike usage $1=$1real cost. The outlined plan doesn't seem to compensate those calling people in the affected areas etc... etc... and I wonder why TCNZ didn't offer a small base credit to all on-account connections to try to regain some loyalty - they could still have offered the 'south of Taupo'/'affected' connections an augmented offer but I think they have failed to acknowledge that many of their customers north of Taupo will have lost confidence and will be keener to try alternatives than they would have been six months ago. It would seem to be an ideal time for 2degrees to try to enter the business market in a serious way.

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ahmad

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#295541 2-Feb-2010 20:59

Those suggesting that businesses should have a backup "plan B" are right when it comes to data, electricity, etc. But mobile? How exactly do you suggest they create redundancy when it comes to mobile phone systems?

Have a set of mobile phones on contract with Vodafone locked up in a safe for use whenever XT goes down? And guess what - it was the INCOMING calls (I'm presuming the outage prevented divertable to said Vodafone phones or even landlines?) that would have affected most businesses, not outgoing.

Nice theory but the reality is that businesses can't really easily implement a backup strategy for when network failure prevents incoming mobile calls.

Edit: Oop, I may have been wrong on the possibility of diverted calls. If the outage did not prevent Telecom diverting calls to another phone then, there is your backup solution.

cokemaster

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#295547 2-Feb-2010 21:15

There are options though, depending on your set up:
* You could have alternative cellphones like CDMA or other providers
* You could have satellite phones
* You could have pagers
* You could use radio backups
* You could put landline or DDI numbers on business cards

Some of these options aren't cheap, others aren't too expensive.
Some might work, others might not.

What would you do if the van broke down and it was required for business? Send it to the garage and wait days for it to be fixed? Or activate a back up plan (say a spare van, or rental van)?

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kiwiscoota

237 posts

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#295550 2-Feb-2010 21:22

ahmad: Those suggesting that businesses should have a backup "plan B" are right when it comes to data, electricity, etc. But mobile? How exactly do you suggest they create redundancy when it comes to mobile phone systems?

Have a set of mobile phones on contract with Vodafone locked up in a safe for use whenever XT goes down? And guess what - it was the INCOMING calls (I'm presuming the outage prevented divertable to said Vodafone phones or even landlines?) that would have affected most businesses, not outgoing.

Nice theory but the reality is that businesses can't really easily implement a backup strategy for when network failure prevents incoming mobile calls.

As with any "backup solution" there is no perfect answer, however why not spread the risk by having 50% of the company mobiles on XT and 50% on Vodafone. I know of several companies that deliberately spread the risk in such a manner.

Even as a very small business owner, I have battery backup power supply, a small generator, two "landline" phone services (2Talk & Telecom), mobile internet as a backup for my ADSL service. Currently I only have a cell phone with Vodafone, but to date that has proved itself to be reliable with no downtime.

All my business stationery lists my Telecom & 2Talk numbers and my business card has my cell phone in addition to the Telecom & 2Talk numbers (and of course my email address). As I see it there is no reason why any of my clients would be unable to contact me via phone, no matter what disaster occured, admittedly they might need to call a second number if one of the networks went down.

Currently when the office is unmanned, I divert calls to my cell phone, if Vodafones network was down & I thought it necessary, I'd run down to the nearest cell phone shop and by a cheap pre-paid on another network so I could divert my office calls to that number when needed.

BiggusDoggus

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#295554 2-Feb-2010 21:38

ahmad: Those suggesting that businesses should have a backup "plan B" are right when it comes to data, electricity, etc. But mobile? How exactly do you suggest they create redundancy when it comes to mobile phone systems?

Have a set of mobile phones on contract with Vodafone locked up in a safe for use whenever XT goes down? And guess what - it was the INCOMING calls (I'm presuming the outage prevented divertable to said Vodafone phones or even landlines?) that would have affected most businesses, not outgoing.

Nice theory but the reality is that businesses can't really easily implement a backup strategy for when network failure prevents incoming mobile calls.

Edit: Oop, I may have been wrong on the possibility of diverted calls. If the outage did not prevent Telecom diverting calls to another phone then, there is your backup solution.

You are correct - it was quite a simple matter to divert the XT number to another number.

With regards to having a whole bunch of other phones locked up in a safe or whatever - no need.

Why not simply have a couple of prepaid (or minimum post-paid rental) Voda or 2 Degree SIMs in a drawer? Ensure your phone hardware is compatible with the other networks (many are) and really, you have a fool-proof, not to mention an extremely simple and cheap, "plan B".

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Kyanar

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#295566 2-Feb-2010 22:01

GJB21: Good to see some compensation that's a bit more meaningful than the December peanuts

But where's the detail on the open "independent review"?

Beware that this is not a smokescreen behind which the review will be quietly swept.

December peanuts? The outage didn't affect me at all, and Telecom credited me a quarter of my data card's monthly plan. I'm affected more by the fact that we have no XT coverage inside the offices at work.

Jughead

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#295739 3-Feb-2010 14:13

From: Stuff

JoeMoe   #113   04:21 pm Feb 02 2010

I missed the birth of my baby boy. Put a price on that.

To all the post's saying quit your whining, sure it's all fine and dandy for people who do not need to keep in touch - but for emergency services telecom cannot afford to mess around.

        I'll geuss i'll hold on to this $20 credit for the next time I have a child.

Oh great it's Telecom's fault that you didn't get to a landline as soon as you found out your phone wasnt working... If I was expecting a child I would make damn sure I was contactable even with out a mobile!

Oh but don't worry... the vultures are keen to get in on this..

Sally French   #163   10:17 am Feb 03 2010
@JoeMoe Sorry to hear that you missed the birth of your son. Could you please email the Stuff newsroom as we'd like to follow-up your story. stuffnewsroom@stuff.co.nz. Thankyou

Any views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer Telecom NZ

ejrg

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#295743 3-Feb-2010 14:22

Sorry Jughead, I don't think your response is any better than his.

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