Optus outage: new capacity rented

Optus has decided to lease a new capacity from another unnamed carrier to prevent a network disaster such as Queensland's loss of internet, voice and mobile services last month.

"We will not be laying an additional fibre link," a spokesperson for the company told ZDNet.com.au following News Ltd's newspaper reports that the carrier had plans to put more cable in the ground. "We will be leasing additional capacity from another carrier using the carrier's existing fibre link."

The move was in response to a statewide outage last month in Queensland caused by pipe-laying contractors cutting a cable at Molendinar, west of Surfer's Paradise. The cut occurred as the inland route at Stanthorpe, through which traffic normally would have been re-routed, was down due to a hardware fault.

Without having a working backup, over a million customers experienced services outages for hours, which resulted in calls for compensation.

At the time, Premier Anna Bligh expressed her displeasure at the extent of damage a cut to one cable could cause.

"I think Queenslanders and, frankly, Australians, are entitled to expect a telecommunications network that can withstand one cable cut," she told reporters in Brisbane at the time.

The additional capacity Optus has decided to lease would create a third level of redundancy for fixed and mobile voice calls within Queensland, but not for those headed interstate.

"In the unlikely event that our two existing links fail again, as occurred on the 15 July, this additional capacity will enable fixed and mobile voice calls initiated within Queensland to reach other Queensland-based recipients," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson was unable to say exactly how much capacity the telco intended to lease and declined to say from which carrier Optus would lease it.