Is West Coast SI, part of NZ ??

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Is West Coast SI, part of NZ ??

Graymond

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#280585 26-Dec-2020 11:16

I have a friend residing in Hokatika who lost broadband and Cell phone yesterday (Xmas Day) for a number of hours, he had tried to find out why, with no luck, however through his other communication sources he heard that a Farmer ? had dug up a fibre cable and there was a two hour wait for technicians to arrive from Christchurch.

The query is, why was this not mentioned on 2degrees fault page, and why was the news media so quite, if it had been a larger population area it would have made Headlines.

There was another service Provider involved which showed no problems.

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#2626820 26-Dec-2020 11:24

No, it's not it would seem :) it's a very dangerous situation that the people here were left in. couldn't call 111.

xpd

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#2626824 26-Dec-2020 11:36

ISP's rarely put up outages even from within their own network let alone anything outside.

Internet outages are fairly common these days from accidental "digs" so no news worthy material to be had.

However, if you we're a royal living in Hokitika, and put up a photo with a "secret" meaning in it, you'd have the headlines.

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RunningMan

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#2626827 26-Dec-2020 11:53

Graymond:[snip] and why was the news media so quite,

Assuming you mean quiet, probably because it was Christmas Day and most had the day off work.

msukiwi

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#2626882 26-Dec-2020 12:10

Failed around 9pm Christmas Eve, restored around 2pm Christmas Day.

No phones (Mobile or Landline) and No Internet from the Taramakau River South to Haast! (Between Greymouth and Hokitika)

All sites, whether it was Chorus, Spark, Vodafone, 2Degrees etc seemed to downplay the problem, and preferred to use the line "MAY HAVE"!

There was NO SERVICE of ANY SORT! Not even 111!!!

So in answer to the original question - NO the West Coast is not part of New Zealand.

(Disclosure: I was born there, and spent 20 years there)

Linux

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#2626887 26-Dec-2020 12:29

RunningMan:
Graymond:[snip] and why was the news media so quite,

Assuming you mean quiet, probably because it was Christmas Day and most had the day off work.

Wow amazing people spending time with family and friends

Any normal person would think it's an outage and go eat more food and relax and wait for mobile coverage and services to return

Graymond

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#2626910 26-Dec-2020 14:14

Having spent most of my working life in Electrical distribution and generation, 8 years of it in standby and call out positions, Public holidays as such did not exist, in one nine year period I had one Xmas not at work, so, it would appear from some comments from some comms personnel that home comforts come first, I can recall having to get out of the bath to attend to a Town supply outage, using today's apparent criteria I could have told them to wait, but no, in my day you took on a job knowing fully the implications, and at times had to put the Job first (unless there were serious reasons for not doing it), we were also required to do overtime during staff shortage, I and many other spent at times, months on permanent standby...

Linux

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#2626911 26-Dec-2020 14:17

Are you aware of how long it takes to join Fibres back together out in the middle of a paddock?

Please tell us all about the Fibre qualifications you have?

Chorus and all the major carriers have engineers on call over every single public holiday as I know from first hand experience

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sbiddle

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#2626913 26-Dec-2020 14:25

Fibre splicing repairs are highly specialised. Even in a big city it can take hours for suitable techs to arrive on scene, the worksite prepared and for splicing to occur. There are outages every day in the country, and very few actually make the news.

Given the scale of most spade fade damage to distribution fibre it actually sounds like the Chorus techs did a pretty good job getting service back up as quickly as they did, especially if they had to travel from Christchurch to get there. It's an area of the country where duplicate redundant paths simply aren't realistic or possible in all cases.

Graymond

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#2626916 26-Dec-2020 14:37

Linux: Are you aware of how long it takes to join Fibres back together out in the middle of a paddock?

Please tell us all about the Fibre qualifications you have?

Chorus and all the major carriers have engineers on call over every single public holiday as I know from first hand experience

Yes I know about your background, and I did not mentioned repair times or qualifications.

As my friend said to me, why was no public mention made of this fault ,especially as there was no 111 facility as mention back in the thread.

We are being told how wonderful fibre optic communications are, the installation of which depends on the contractors, our neighbor has fibre tacked along their old fence line.

Because so much can be sent down a fibre circuit, I believe there will be more outages, and the same is happening with the electrical distribution system due to changes in maintenance procedures, after all the shareholders must be kept happy..

Graymond

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#2626918 26-Dec-2020 14:45

sbiddle:

Fibre splicing repairs are highly specialised. Even in a big city it can take hours for suitable techs to arrive on scene, the worksite prepared and for splicing to occur. There are outages every day in the country, and very few actually make the news.

Given the scale of most spade fade damage to distribution fibre it actually sounds like the Chorus techs did a pretty good job getting service back up as quickly as they did, especially if they had to travel from Christchurch to get there. It's an area of the country where duplicate redundant paths simply aren't realistic or possible in all cases.

So,tell no one, even those that rely on phones for health reasons??

Also why have a 111 system that relies on fibre, I know of major power schemes that were taken of a hot standby micro wave system and put onto fibre and controlled from another part of the country, how secure is that ??

nztim

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#2626919 26-Dec-2020 14:46

Real question is why aren’t farmers and other people using beforeudig.co.nz - In my neighbourhood last month the gas company cut through a 50 pair cable resulting in 20 rushed UFB installs

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Linux

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#2626922 26-Dec-2020 14:50

Graymond:

sbiddle:

Fibre splicing repairs are highly specialised. Even in a big city it can take hours for suitable techs to arrive on scene, the worksite prepared and for splicing to occur. There are outages every day in the country, and very few actually make the news.

Given the scale of most spade fade damage to distribution fibre it actually sounds like the Chorus techs did a pretty good job getting service back up as quickly as they did, especially if they had to travel from Christchurch to get there. It's an area of the country where duplicate redundant paths simply aren't realistic or possible in all cases.

So,tell no one, even those that rely on phones for health reasons??

Also why have a 111 system that relies on fibre, I know of major power schemes that were taken of a hot standby micro wave system and put onto fibre and controlled from another part of the country, how secure is that ??

@Graymond you are aware even if it was copper pairs that were chopped thru the same thing would of happened?

You are now just getting silly as then costs would rise and you would be moaning about the cost of mobile calls

Graymond

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#2626923 26-Dec-2020 14:52

nztim: Real question is why aren’t farmers and other people using beforeudig.co.nz - In my neighbourhood last month the gas company cut through a 50 pair cable resulting in 20 rushed UFB installs

Be interesting to see if they get charged and taken to court, or do they get a smack on the hand and told do no do that again.

sbiddle

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#2626926 26-Dec-2020 15:10

Graymond:

sbiddle:

Fibre splicing repairs are highly specialised. Even in a big city it can take hours for suitable techs to arrive on scene, the worksite prepared and for splicing to occur. There are outages every day in the country, and very few actually make the news.

Given the scale of most spade fade damage to distribution fibre it actually sounds like the Chorus techs did a pretty good job getting service back up as quickly as they did, especially if they had to travel from Christchurch to get there. It's an area of the country where duplicate redundant paths simply aren't realistic or possible in all cases.

So,tell no one, even those that rely on phones for health reasons??

Also why have a 111 system that relies on fibre, I know of major power schemes that were taken of a hot standby micro wave system and put onto fibre and controlled from another part of the country, how secure is that ??

Umm.. I don't really know how to answer that without actually spending 30 mins explaining how telco networks are built. The simple reality is 100% of phone calls in NZ are carried over fibre at least once, and the vast majority of calls in the country have been carried over fibre networks since the late late '80s.

We have a problem in NZ that rural NZers jumped up and down (and still complain today) at any thought of charging them more for telco services in rural areas. Who is supposed to pay for all this extra redundancy in remote areas if the people who live there don't want to pay for it?

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#2626927 26-Dec-2020 15:19

Try giving birth in the west coast

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