Telstra ADSL outage swells - News

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Telstra ADSL outage swells

By Megan McAuliffe, ZDNet Australia
August 06, 2001
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/soa/Telstra-ADSL-outage-swells/0,139023165,120252794,00.htm

Update: Telstra's troubles have accelerated, with service difficulties on its ADSL broadband network spreading nationwide.

As reported by ZDNet earlier today, Telstra's ADSL network fell over on Saturday afternoon and continued through to Sunday morning, affecting customers in Victoria.

A Telstra spokesperson told ZDNet the 22-hour outage was linked to a software error which occurred in the ADSL access server.

According to the telco, when the fault was rectified, the data was found to be corrupted, a problem that took suppliers from United States and Australia 12 hours to fix. The service was up and running again on Sunday morning.

Telstra says it is working with its suppliers to identify the cause of its ongoing problem, which is causing instability to the network.

This particular problem is linked to the remuneration of fees Telstra agreed to give affected customers as a -gesture of good will", according to the spokesperson.

-It's an offer of gratitude for continued loyalty while we work with suppliers to make the network stable," the spokesperson said.

An isolated hardware fault, however, surfaced on Sunday evening, further affecting customers logging on to the ADSL BigPond broadband service from Victoria.

Connection problems continued today with a report on the telco's service status page saying customers throughout Australia were affected by another hiccup in its ADSL BigPond broadband service.

The service has since been contained, affecting customers in Tasmania only.

Telecommunications guru Paul Budde told ZDNet there is a number of network and software issues the telco needs to correct on its ADSL network on a national scale.

Budde says, Telstra should have informed users that it would take time to master the ADSL network, instead of creating misleading expectations from the start.

-[Telstra] should have told customers to keep modem connections and negotiated a better deal," while it implemented the service to an acceptable standard.