Chorus Fibre Outage at 1am

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Chorus Fibre Outage at 1am

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97 posts

Master Geek

#2791405 7-Oct-2021 18:04

Linux: 1am planned work end of story!

Planned work needs to happen so you really need to move on!

This thread needs to be locked by a mod as itt is 100% pointless

If it needs to happen, you'd think that they could easily update their subscribers on what is happening, especially seeing some offer mobile data during the time of outages as a way to make sure your connections are never down, yet if it is not listed then "Free data" during downtime cannot be accessed.

I have subscription services I pay less than $2 all the way up to $50 a month for that inform me of scheduled maintenance and downtime, yet the service I pay hundreds of dollars a month to doesn't even have it listed or inform me of planned interruption to service .

You'd think "Planned" would mean that it is easier to inform everyone that they won't be able to access your service from x time to y time.

Linux

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#2791406 7-Oct-2021 18:09

They most likely did contact their customers and note Chorus customers are not the retail customers of ISPs

MadEngineer

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#2791413 7-Oct-2021 18:29

If you require planned outage notifications and you’re not already getting them then your wallet isn’t spread open wide enough.

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

quickymart

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#2791416 7-Oct-2021 18:33

Right, so the provider should be doing the notifications then. Have you spoken to them about it?

That outages page is for unplanned (outages), not planned (maintenance) - which is what this thread is about. This wasn't an outage, so it wouldn't have been on that page.

Linux

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#2791417 7-Oct-2021 18:33

A Outage and Planned work are 100% different!

Valcor

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#2791426 7-Oct-2021 18:41

Linux: A Outage and Planned work are 100% different!

Yet outage maps include Scheduled Maintenance events: https://www.spark.co.nz/outages/

Linux

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#2791427 7-Oct-2021 18:46

Talk to your ISP and request a fully managed connection!

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dolsen

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#2791429 7-Oct-2021 18:46

Linux: A Outage and Planned work are 100% different!

Agreed. However, to the end user, planned work that results in a loss of service is indistinguishable from an unplanned outage, unless there is some prior notification. I had an outage. I checked the outage page. Was there some other place I should have looked (genuine question for future reference)?

Wellingtondave

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Master Geek

#2791439 7-Oct-2021 19:26

dolsen:

Linux: A Outage and Planned work are 100% different!

Agreed. However, to the end user, planned work that results in a loss of service is indistinguishable from an unplanned outage, unless there is some prior notification. I had an outage. I checked the outage page. Was there some other place I should have looked (genuine question for future reference)?

Every time some customer forward thinking is suggested on here so we're not rebooting equipment, searching for known outage information all over the place and not logging unnecessary calls with the helpdesk(s), certain bullies always turn up telling everyone that they need to get a service level agreement else GTFO.

No wonder customer satisfaction for Telco's and ISPs is down the toilet.

All people are asking for is being able to find out when something is going on and whether the outage will be short or of unknown duration.

Linux

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#2791447 7-Oct-2021 19:40

My satisfaction with 2degrees as my Fibre provider is very high and not down the toilet

As advised before request a fully managed connection

toejam316

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#2791484 7-Oct-2021 20:28

Without going into too many specifics, LFCs (Chorus, UFF, Enable) notify their customers (RSPs such as Voyager, Spark, Vodafone) of planned work like this, who will then if they expect large, noticed impact, will put something up on their outage trackers, or in cases like this will generally just monitor the situation and have something in place to catch inbound contact from the customer contact centres.

The impact noticed in this thread last night isn't anything out of the ordinary, and actually happens with no one really noticing most of the time, except maybe the odd insomniac/gamer.

Reality is, across scales big and small, it's simply not feasible to provide notice of these outages to customers, and likely would cause more administrative issues with customers requesting refunds for the period of known outage, etc.

It's not about bullying people into accepting it, it's about the realities of business. If you're going to the bank/toilet/lunch and can't answer the phone for the next 15 minutes, do you notify all your customers that you will be unavailable just in case, or do you let your voicemail tell them that you can't be reached right now but it'll all be okay shortly? No different.

Anything I say is the ramblings of an ill informed, opinionated so-and-so, and not representative of any of my past, present or future employers, and is also probably best disregarded.

jmosen

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#2791493 7-Oct-2021 20:38

Obviously, conducting planned maintenance at 1 AM is going to bother far fewer people than doing it at 1 PM. But it’s still discourteous and disruptive to run planned maintenance and not have notice of it passed onto the consumer, probably by Chorus informing the RSPs and the RSPs using all possible communications channels to let customers know.

I ended up doing the usual troubleshooting steps because I wasn’t expecting an outage.

Vocus also lost me as a customer today. There’ve been a few issues with them of late including some international speed issues earlier in the week. So in the absence of information to the contrary, I assumed they were experiencing more problems. Had I known it was a general Chorus thing, I wouldn’t have made the jump. Speculation fills a vacuum and it never ceases to amaze me how communications companies are some of the worst at actually communicating.
Knowingly taking the connection down and not saying somehting in advance isn’t acceptable.

Jonathan

Valcor

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Master Geek

#2791497 7-Oct-2021 20:46

toejam316:

Without going into too many specifics, LFCs (Chorus, UFF, Enable) notify their customers (RSPs such as Voyager, Spark, Vodafone) of planned work like this, who will then if they expect large, noticed impact, will put something up on their outage trackers, or in cases like this will generally just monitor the situation and have something in place to catch inbound contact from the customer contact centres.

The impact noticed in this thread last night isn't anything out of the ordinary, and actually happens with no one really noticing most of the time, except maybe the odd insomniac/gamer.

Reality is, across scales big and small, it's simply not feasible to provide notice of these outages to customers, and likely would cause more administrative issues with customers requesting refunds for the period of known outage, etc.

It's not about bullying people into accepting it, it's about the realities of business. If you're going to the bank/toilet/lunch and can't answer the phone for the next 15 minutes, do you notify all your customers that you will be unavailable just in case, or do you let your voicemail tell them that you can't be reached right now but it'll all be okay shortly? No different.

TBH I don't see how it is that impossible to send a notice that is auto generated on outage maps like the Spark one also lists scheduled maintenance. No different from support tickets or tracking ticket that can automatically be generated and posted on ISP Network Status pages. It's not asking Chrous to ring every single person in New Zealand and tell them, but there is technology already that that auto updates status messages.

The issue here is this was a simply question and not sure why some people were met with such hostility.

Lias

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#2791498 7-Oct-2021 20:46

Linux, you're a nice guy, generally very helpful and someone who I'd happily buy a beer for, but I think your many years working in the industry are blinding you to reality here. This thread isn't the first, nor will it be the last, exposing a disconnect between the expectations of the telco industry and the expectations of consumers. Yes, maintenance does need to happen, working in enterprise IT I'm entirely too aware of that, but there is significant room for improvement in the way it's communicated, both by LFC's and ISPs. Yes most people are probably in bed at 1am.. Yes people should buy a business grade connection if they need to have a connection that doesn't go down.. But the lack of notification and inability for people to verify if the issue is local to them is just not really good enough.

The LFC's presumably have system(s) internally that monitor outages and lists planned maintenance. This should be provided to the ISP's via some form of API. (I'll be honest, I'd be mildly surprised if this sort of thing didn't already exist). The ISP's presumably also have internal monitoring systems. It really shouldn't be that much of a stretch for some automation to be built so that if LFC tells ISP of scheduled maintenance or outage, or if ISP's monitoring systems see an entire suburb fall off the network, that gets pushed to the ISP status page.

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup.

quickymart

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#2791500 7-Oct-2021 20:48

toejam316:

Reality is, across scales big and small, it's simply not feasible to provide notice of these outages to customers, and likely would cause more administrative issues with customers requesting refunds for the period of known outage, etc.

This. I can imagine everyone calling up asking for a full month's credit because they lost 5-10 minutes of service at 1 in the morning (don't laugh, it happened all the time when I was at Spark and Telstra Clear). While the idea of a planned outages list is good, I can see some people abusing it as mentioned above, and that is very much a downside to having a list like this available.

I hasten to add that all providers offer a "best effort" service. It's not guaranteed, continuous, fault-free 24/7 a day. Like John and MadEngineer have basically said: if you want that sort of thing, you'll be paying for a (premium) managed service - far, far, far more than your $90 a month consumer broadband connection.

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