RJKIng: @FireEngine, In my and a colleagues opinion the amount of information provided on the outage page was limited in describing the extent of the outage. Words along the lines of major or multiple events (Hamilton and CH-CH Dunedin), health and safety restrictions for technical staff to access the area and the details of a location / cause of the fault. Details like landslip just North of Kaikoura, multiple cuts rail bridge wash out etc. While some customers may not appreciate what this detail means the more technical minded people, like those that visit this site, would appreciate the information and give them some understanding of the significance of the repair required. Also that technical staff were working on rerouting services would also have been good info, obviously this was a contingency but would give users some assurance all efforts were being expended.I should not have had to come to this site to get a full picture of the problem. The information you gave here was extensive and informative. All things the official support page we not.
FYI I have no problem with the Orcon product I subscribe to.
Thank you for taking the time to provide the extensive information here.
I think you are forgetting that such a situation, and our understanding of it, evolves over time, in all honesty the Website Status page aims to give the following information:
The fact that there is a major outage. Who is affected When it will be fixed
Those aims are pretty common across most industries.
We aren't aiming to give a complete context there as we fully understand we don't have it, and in cases such as this can't get it in a timely fashion (e.g. the fact that there are multiple cuts to the same link didn't become apparent for some time, diagnostics can't tell you that, a tech, or a policeman has to get past the first landslip to see the second, report it back, tests run etc etc it just isn't clear from the get go how bad it is during weather events).
At least you get a descriptive text, many utilities think "Under Repair" or similar is sufficient statement. As always there is a balance between speed of information and detailed content, in our case we concentrate on getting the fundamental details there as quickly as we have them.
Note weather events are unlike any other damage, normally when an excavator cuts a fibre once he stops, he doesn't cut it again down the road, or 100km away so generally the fix time for the cut gives you a firm indication of when we can expect service restored.
Of course I can come on here later and give you a fuller story but I don't believe that was possible much earlier. Yes we were working on re-routing but with no guarantees (and it took some 12hrs to enact even then), and the team were pretty stretched just getting such service restored - if you followed our Network Status page on Friday we had 3 concurrent major impacting events, like it or not in such times we will rightly concentrate on restoring service and communicating as best we can.
BTW I personally was updating the Network Status page for much of Friday - any difference in information is intentional for the target audience.
@FireEngine: All of which is true, and in hindsight there is a better picture. Part of building that picture is gathering feedback and accepting it's value. The feedback here is simple, after the last post on Friday (nod to you for keeping us up to date btw) there was nothing on Saturday until a reroute was in place in the afternoon. So from a customer perspective it looked like we had been forgotten. -Hence customers are then forced to ring the contact center for information. Now from my own experience and from what others have expressed here and elsewhere I wasn't the only one to have a negative experience doing that. At one stage they suggested i go online to complain about not getting online - come on man, that is just beyond poor. Hindsight is only of use if lessons learned are used to improve things. Don't get me wrong, I think the behind the scenes effort that has gone in is awesome (and I wish i had been told that story via email and not quoted an irrelevant policy). Sadly though your front office has let you down big time. Customers aren't going to stay loyal for 'standard', if Orcon want to be standouts and industry leaders, or even just retain customers - and once upon a time they did, then as an organization you will have to accept that many customer felt let down. What is truly sad if the conversation is happening here and cant happen through the feedback channels at Orcon itself (and believe me I have tired) - that communication reality tells the story of where things are at for customers. All the best man, thanks for letting us know what the real deal was
RJKIng: Once fiber comes my way in June I will be looking at my other ISP options for sure.
Might be useful for me to understand which ISP you view as leading in the outage comms space?
I think one ISP was already providing provisioning updates via SMS. I'd pay to have SMS updates if there was an outage, then I'd know when it should be working again, and if not, know it was unrelated so I can log a fault.
RJKIng: Once fiber comes my way in June I will be looking at my other ISP options for sure.
Might be useful for me to understand which ISP you view as leading in the outage comms space?
I think one ISP was already providing provisioning updates via SMS. I'd pay to have SMS updates if there was an outage, then I'd know when it should be working again, and if not, know it was unrelated so I can log a fault.
We do provisioning and some individual-customer assurance updates by SMS.
Two points though regarding widespread outages:
In a widespread event the cellular network is likely to be affected by the fixed infrastructure that serves the cellular masts. Also it will be heavily replied upon by those providing assistance during the event, I'll ask but it may unrealistic to expect cellular providers to send huge numbers of SMS messages in such circumstances.
I've managed to extract the full sequence of Network Status Updates that we used for the Dunedin outage. The date/time is when the update went up on the website (first at the bottom).
2014-04-19 11:59 PM Service is re-routed via an alternative link. Equipment may require a reboot to come back online.
2014-04-19 05:57 PM Service has been re-routed via an alternative link. This should remain stable until fibre is restored. Equipment may require a reboot to come back online. The backup link is not full capacity so some peak-time congestion may be experienced.
2014-04-19 04:10 PM Service has been re-routed via an alternative link. This should remain stable until fibre is restored. Equipment may require a reboot to come back online
2014-04-19 04:10 PM Service has been re-routed via an alternative link. This should remain stable until fibre is restored. Equipment may require a reboot to come back online
2014-04-19 04:08 PM Service has been re-routed via an alternative link. This should remain stable until fibre is restored. Equipment may require a reboot to come back online. This circuit is subject to a double-cut. One cut has had repair actions completed. The second has difficult access due to flooding. Technicians will make an attempt to access and repair at approx 10pm but repair may need to wait for daylight and/or the flooding to reduce.
2014-04-18 10:32 PM This circuit is subject to a double-cut. One cut has had repair actions completed. The second has difficult access due to flooding. Technicians will make an attempt to access and repair at approx 10pm but repair may need to wait for daylight and/or the flooding to reduce.
2014-04-18 03:27 PM Due to a vendor circuit outage we currently have an outage of all services to Dunedin. Vendor has advised a number of repair actions underway with some services possibly restoring from 8pm onwards but this is subject to further risk due to the conditions onsite.
2014-04-18 11:47 AM Due to a vendor circuit outage we currently have an outage of all services to Dunedin. No ETR at this time.
Now I appreciate that this isn't a particularly customer view as no history of the updates is shown on the website but that can be altered given some time and investment if beneficial but I'm happy to take comments on the content/timings. As I said these were based upon the best information we had at the time.
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