NSW storm damages Uecomm fibre - News - Communications

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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NSW storm damages Uecomm fibre

By Andrew Colley, 0
May 02, 2003
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/NSW-storm-damages-Uecomm-fibre/0,130061791,120274164,00.htm

Uecomm has confirmed that some of its New South Wales customers have been affected by network outages over the last 24 hours.

A spokesperson for Uecomm said that heavy rain that hit the state area early on Wednesday morning damaged parts of the company's fibre optic network. The spokesperson would not name the companies that had been affected by the outages.

One Uecomm customer who contacted ZDNet Australia but asked not to be named claims the outage revealed that the network service provider was unable to meet customer service guarantees.

"While several 'ETAs' have been given, the faults have not been repaired. Worse still, the redundancy promised to clients is simply not there, meaning that traffic has not been able to be re-routed," said the angry customer.

Uecomm's spokesperson said the storm damaged fibre-optic tails that connect customers to the carrier's core network (last mile connections). She said that while customers may have paid for core network redundancy many may not have paid to protect their fibre-optic link to the network.

Uecomm's major clients in NSW include the Australian Research and Education Network (more commonly known as AARNet) and the NSW Department of Education. Uecomm's service provision contract with AARNet encompasses six universities in the Sydney basin.

Uecomm refused to comment on whether the outage had impacted on AARNet or the NSW Department of Education.

A spokesperson for the NSW Department of Education said the organisation had not noted degradation in the performance of its network over the last 24 hours.