Unfortunately Compass communications apparently have had some hdd's with critical configuration data on it for some of their systems either in sky tower - or base stations die on them and they seemingly dont have backups .

As i am not a wireless expert - this is information i have gleamed from talking to their support staff.

Unfortuntaley (again) it sounds like they didnt have good backup data nor redundancy of this which is a fundemental error in any computer system be-it a business or a communications system surely especially considering their size and the number of businesses that depend on this system of communication..

The reason i am writing this is actually just because of frustration and a cathartic rant really. I run the IT systems for a medium sized business and having the wireless connection has been for the majority of the time very good - they had a tendancy to fail about once or twice a year it seems historically and when it failed it might fail for anything from 5 minutes to 5 hrs (the worst until this one and sadly they claimed the last time was a problem with OUR systems not theirs and it turned out to be their failure again)

However 9am on wednesday 23rd  was the last time the staff at my work had internet access and it never ceases to amaze me how our work is now so dependant upon it.

They told me this morning around 11am that the replacement hdd's that had to be shipped in from wellington....had just arrived !!! But they are configuring them and should be up and running at 2pm - then that turns into 4 pm and then at 5pm they tell me that  they are going to be ringing all their customers to reconfigure the antennas etc (which surely means they simply dont have ANY data to configure their systems with)  ! Oh but they wouldnt talk to me about reconfiguring our antenna as they were doing it in some 'methodical' order and they'd get to us in due course (the company i work for begins with an A' and I'd just have to wait.   Much like my sons dentist ringing us because their computer died and lost all the appointment records - and their IT company didnt keep good backups.

So anyhow i told them to simply call me anytime in this instance and i would drive in and do any reconfiguring at any time of day or night. Needless to say i've not heard anything.

So - after 36hrs of outage and no real sign of a connection - i rang them at 7:15pm tonight. Their support answer machine says 'you've called us outside our support hours of 7am - 9pm' please call back during those hours...aaaaggggggghhhhhh

I would hate to think just how many businesses in the auckland area are having this problem and from what i have read in their t's & c's there is just about nothing i can do for loss of business or inconvenience.

majorly  sucky.... rant over - feel marginally better

"their are two types of IT person - one that keeps good backups the other that wishes they had !"
pretty much says everything !