Vodafone struggles with the S word
Now, granted, Vodafone's spin doctors don't have quite the practice of Telecom's at dealing with network outages.But when intermittent problems hit 16 Vodafone cellsites around the Bay of Plenty on Saturday, it was still a bit quick to point the finger.A
NBR staff
Tue, 09 Mar 2010
Now, granted, Vodafone’s spin doctors don’t have quite the practice of Telecom’s at dealing with network outages.
But when intermittent problems hit 16 Vodafone cellsites around the Bay of Plenty on Saturday, it was still a bit quick to point the finger.
A spokesman immediately blamed a routine-upgrade-gone-wrong by fibre contractor FX Networks.
Ouch. With FX Networks mooted as one of the companies that could help connect regional fibre companies under the government’s UFB scheme now is not the time for bad publicity.
FX Networks MD Murray Jurgeleit - used to more positive publicity, such as Commerce Commissioner Anita Mazzoleni salivating over his company's fibre investment at Telcon10 - was quick to deny the accusation.
Monday afternoon, Vodafone came around to Mr Jurgeleit’s world view.
Mostly.
"On Saturday, one of Vodafone’s fibre network providers FX Networks began a planned network upgrade to cabling between Taupiri and Horotiu,” said the company in a statement.
"The work was not expected to impact service to Vodafone customers. However a fault was triggered during the work and the automated network fail over did not take place as expected. The resulting disruption to service was clearly Vodafone’s responsibility and we acknowledge that FX networks was not at fault.”
The whole episode may provide minor comfort to Telecom boss Paul Reynolds, who has claimed that Vodafone’s 2G network can’t really act as a fallback for its 3G network, as the older service will get swamped during any outage.
Vodafone said Bay of Plenty customers could still make calls, if they kept trying.
NBR staff
Tue, 09 Mar 2010
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