As of last 9pm night, Telecom could not explain a failure on its XT network that prevented some customers Taupo south from sending txts, or in some cases making calls.Some txt messages were not going through. Others arrived at their destination multiple t
As of last 9pm night, Telecom could not explain a failure on its XT network that prevented some customers Taupo south from sending txts, or in some cases making calls.
Some txt messages were not going through. Others arrived at their destination multiple times.
Problems began Monday afternoon, and continue for some.
One in five
Initially, the telco seemed to be fingering unusually high heavy traffic, with a press release yesterday saying there had been “unusual traffic” between 4pm and 11pm Monday.
A service message on Telecom’s website said around one in five txt messages could not go through, and some voice calls could not be connected, because of “very high traffic”.
But last night the company was backing away from that explanation:
“We're looking at the cause but nothing to confirm at this stage,” spokesman Ian Bonnar told NBR.
Neither could Telecom outline the exact scope of the problem.
“I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly how many customers were affected as it was intermittent,” said Mr Bonnar.
Not so fast
By midday Tuesday, Telecom posted a message on its website saying the issue had been resolved - echoing the over-optimism of previous outages - but some customers continued to complain, online and to NBR, until late last night. The fault message returned to Telecom’s site. It is still there this Wednesday morning [UPDATE: it listed issues as "resolved" as of 10am].
Unique in world
"I really feel for the Telecom people over this. But I feel for their customers even more," wrote Telecommunications Users Association boss Ernie Newman to his 500 or so corporate members.
"It MUST be fixed, and soon. I still haven't found an example anywhere in the world of a mobile network experiencing teething problems on such a scale."
Third strike
Later, Mr Newman told NBR, “[Tuanz] said during the second outage that users are tolerant with new technology, but that patience might not extend to a third. This is a third, albeit lesser.
"It will get much harder from here to contain brand damage especially in the regions most affected.”
Christchurch RNC in the gun again?
Although Telecom has yet to elaborate on the cause of this latest XT glitch, the fact it has struct the lower half of the country indicates it may again involve the radio network controller (RNC) in Christchurch implicated in both the December and late January network failures.
In the January 27 incident, a piece of ancillary network hardware failed. When XT customers tried to reconnect to the network en masse, the RNC was overwhelmed and crashed.
The Christchurch RNC controls all XT traffic Taupo south. A second RNC, in Auckland, controls all traffic Taupo north. Since the January 27 to 29 problems, Telecom says it has doubled the Christchurch RNC's processing capacity. Two new RNCs are due to be installed this month.
Independent reviewer due to be named this week
After the January outage, Telecom chief executive Paul Reynolds announced his company would commission an independent review of XT. At Telecom’s results briefing Friday, Dr Reynolds said the party carrying out the review would likely be announced this week.
Telecom shares (NZX: TEL), which have been trading close to a 52-week low, closed yesterday up 1 cent to $2.33.
Telecom is advising XT users still having problems to take out their sim card and battery. More on its advisory here.
