Today has brought more grief for Telecom's 3G mobile network, with multiple areas in the lower North Island experiencing problems.It seems a network upgrade designed to make XT more robust has - temporarily at least - had the opposite effect.READ ALSO:&nb
Today has brought more grief for Telecom's 3G mobile network, with multiple areas in the lower North Island experiencing problems.
It seems a network upgrade designed to make XT more robust has - temporarily at least - had the opposite effect.
READ ALSO: Telecom appoints Analysys Mason to carry out XT review
The XT outages in both December and late January involved a radio network controller (or RNC) in Christchurch, which controls network traffic south of Taupo.
An email from Gen-i boss Chris Quin to Telecom corporate clients today indicates that Telecom's plan to boost its existing RNC set-up has gone horribly wrong.
Around 16 or 20 cellsites moved onto a new RNC between 1am and 3am this morning experienced problems from around 10.30am.
The sites had to be rolled back onto the old RNC, a process that took until 2.30pm to complete.
Since the January 27 - 29 XT outage, Telecom has doubled the processing power of its two RNCs (one in Chrischurch controlling traffic Taupo north, the other in Auckland controlling traffic Taupo south). The telco has also pledged to install two new RNCs, which one of Alcatel-Lucent's competitors puts at up to $US12 million each.
At 10.25, the company issued a service advisory via Twitter, saying:
"We're aware some customers in New Plymouth & Upper Hutt may be experiencing XT service issues. Techs working hard to restore full service."
Wairarapa was later added to the list of affected areas.
A further update 12.34pm said "New Plymouth sites have now been restored."
The company is still working to solve "performance issues" in Upper Hutt and the Wairarapa.
Today's gremlins follow still-unexplained txt problems on Monday, and major outages during December and January.
You know the drill
Again, Telecom is advising customers to reset their cellphone once service is restored by removing its battery (if it's not sealed) and sim card, waiting one minute, then reinserting them.
Telecom has yet to make any specific comment on specific services affected by the latest network failure, the cause, or the number of customers affected.
A service advisory at 2.44pm reads: "Upper Hutt sites all up and working now, (along with New Plymouth). We're actively working on Wairarapa. We are still watching carefully."
Cause of January 27-29 outage confirmed
Separately, Telecom has confirmed the cause of the XT network failure of late January.
As first reported in NBR, a failure in an ancillary piece of networking hardware was followed by a "swarm" of XT users all trying to reconnect at once, which crashed Telecom's Christchurch radio network controller.
Telecom shares (NZX: TEL) were down one cent to $2.33 in late trading.
RAW DATA: Geni's update to clients:
XT Mobile Network Update – 18 February 2010
As we have been communicating to affected clients and updating our website, we have had interruptions to the XT Mobile Network service in New Plymouth and the Hutt Valley regions this morning. You may have heard media stories today on this as well.
I can confirm that the affected cell sites in New Plymouth and the Hutt Valley have been restored after a service interruption that commenced early this morning.
All affected sites were progressively restored by 2.30pm.
We have a clear plan to address XT performance, resilience, quality and coverage as part of our absolute commitment to deliver a world class XT network. As part of that, we have been undertaking a Radio Network Controller (RNC) expansion programme that will further protect the network from traffic spikes and increase the resiliency of the network.
We have built a new RNC in Christchurch, and have started migrating Christchurch connected cell sites over to that RNC. Last night (17 February) we moved a further 16 sites, however, this morning the sites that were migrated began experiencing service issues and users in the affected regions will have had a degraded mobile service. We have rolled back those migrations, we will assess the cause of the issue and then recommence the programme of bringing in the new RNCs.
Our plan is to complete the installation of the new RNCs by mid-March.
We apologise for any inconvenience or problems you may have experienced due to this interruption of service. Please be assured that Telecom and its partners are working globally 24/7 to deliver the plan we have committed to you around the XT network.
For further information on the situation, please go to our website www.gen-i.co.nz.
If you wish to discuss this further with me, or any of the Gen-i team, please let us know.
Chris Quin
CEO Gen-i Australasia
