Opposition unearths 100,000 neglected Telstra faults - News - Communications

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Opposition unearths 100,000 neglected Telstra faults

By Megan McAuliffe, ZDNet Australia
September 19, 2001
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Opposition-unearths-100-000-neglected-Telstra-faults/0,130061791,120260551,00.htm

One hundred thousand Telstra network faults have been exposed by the Federal Opposition, some dating back as far as 1995. However, the carrier denies any of them are 'urgent'.

Through a leak to the the Opposition party, Shadow Minister for Regional Services, Senator Sue MacKay, has been seeking a database known as E71 from Telstra, which was claimed to contain 20,000 unattended network faults dating back to 1995.

According to Senator Mackay, after months of pressure Telstra has released the database to the Opposition party, revealing a backlog of 100,000 faults, much more than previously anticipated.

-This is a massive record of the Government and Telstra's failure, which had to be trolleyed into my office in two large boxes," Senator MacKay said in a statement.

The Opposition party claims out of the 100,000 reported faults, 20 percent would be classified as a priority.

Telstra has denied the allegations, saying it believes that none of the reports in the database are considered urgent.

-None of these jobs effect customers at all, they are maintenance jobs, not faults. For example, chipped manhole covers or rodents nests, which is totally unrelated to the service. This database is Telstra's to do list, house keeping and house cleaning," Telstra spokesperson Andy Redman said.

-Urgent issues are prioritised and fixed on the spot. There are no customer affected jobs in the database at all," Redman added.

A copy of a section of the database released in a statement by Senator MacKay's office reveals, however, that some of the faults recorded by technicians were considered -urgent" or -dangerous".

One database entry by a technician states, -pillar broken off cement base dangerous too close to road and cnr."

Other records reveal that a cable is, -constantly breaking down & dangerous" and a -lead cable needs urgent replacement".

There is even an entry which states a pipe has been damaged by -lightning".

-The database has remained a closely kept secret from consumers for years and was not even considered by the Besley inquiry into telecommunications," Senator MacKay said.

Telstra's spokesperson told ZDNet Australia that to say the E71 database has been a well-kept secret is misleading, as -at least 15,000 services staff knew about it."

-No customers ever asked about it," he added.

Senator MacKay claims that due to the Government's privatisation agenda begun in 1996, Telstra has cut back on its capital expenditure on its network, leading to a reduction in the amount of technicians working on repairs and maintenance work.