Telstra ADSL outage swells

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.

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Talkback 5 comments

    The last paragraph said it all ...Anonymous -- 07/08/01

    The last paragraph said it all they should not have sold a service which is substandard. Now our business is stuck on a 12 month contract with an ISP that can not guarantee 24/7 service. This is ridiculous as we can not function without internet access.

    I think Geoff Brooklyn got it ...Anonymous -- 07/08/01

    I think Geoff Brooklyn got it right. Telstra sold
    a load of crap, they didn't bother to tell people.
    We canned our ADSL two months after installation.
    Fortunately, we hadn't yet been billed for installation and had only just been billed for the
    first usage account. I packed it up and returned it via registered mail. Had to do this twice 'cause they got the address wrong first time. Refused to pay anything and kept on leaning on them. Finally got all costs knocked off bill.
    Have also terminated other Telstra services and will continue this especially when MNP is real. Hit them where it hurts - these people are just incompetent ripoff merchants.

    Surely everyone isn't surprise ...Anonymous -- 07/08/01

    Surely everyone isn't surprised by this!? Telstra have charged too much for unstable, untested systems for years. Take the Analogue Mobile Network for instance. Charge a fortune for the phones, the connection, talk time then scrap the whole thing and make all the technology redundant by moving to GSM (another stinky technology). And we all get sucked in and throw money at them again....
    ...why the heck would they do the right thing????

    Another day,another problem. A ...Keith Styles -- 07/08/01

    Another day,another problem. ADSL was down again today. Tech Support wanted me to reload my PC software, yet again. A procedure I refuse to carry out. As usual, I did nothing & the network was the problem again! Why do Telstra continue with the feeble excuse that each time the network fails, it is an intermitant fault or my PC is the cause. Nothing intermitant about it, when its on a daily basis!! If the software was at fault, where was the backup copies. Why didn't they revert it immediately, until the problem was found & corrected????? Do the have any understanding of the pain & disruption being caused to all users? Do they have any understanding of backup & recovery procedures?? I doubt it!

    It's stories like this thay ma ...Anonymous -- 09/08/01

    It's stories like this thay make me almost grateful that braodband is unavailable where I live, even though I live 15 minutes from the State capital. Even if I could get it, I download more with dialup than broadband connections permit each month.

    Australia has some unique challenges with broadband, but right now it is the laughing stock of the International online community.

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