Published on the 11/02/2016 | Written by Beverley Head
When Telstra’s mobile network crashed this week it revealed just how reliant Australian business has become on communications networks…
Within minutes of the failure of Telstra’s mobile network, social media lit up with complaints and questions. Consumers were hampered – but many small businesses ground to a halt, unable to connect to clients or suppliers for several hours, or even take electronic payments using smartphones and tablets.
Many small and medium businesses in particular are entirely reliant on mobile services rather than fixed line communications, often leaving them without a backup plan. In the future, as more Internet of Things devices are deployed and connected over mobile networks, the impacts of such outages could be significantly greater.
Telstra currently boasts the largest mobile network with around 16.7 million mobile customers, and has 4G coverage available for 96 percent of the population. It spent $190 million on additional spectrum earlier this month and expects to have 4G available to 99 percent of the population by mid-2017.
While Telstra’s network is fast, this week’s outage proved it wasn’t infallible.
With arguably the nation’s most robust network, many were left scratching their heads at how a modern communications network with built in redundancy to the degree Telstra has, could grind to a halt. In a post on social media Kate McKenzie, COO for Telstra Operations, apologised for the outage and the impact on some customers.
In the post she revealed that the fault occurred when one of the network nodes was taken offline to fix a technical fault, without proper procedures being followed. Those customers that were disconnected from that node were then routed to other nodes, leading to congestion across the rest of the network.
According to McKenzie’s post; “While the outage was short in duration we fully realise the impact it had, which is why we are offering all of our customers a day of free mobile data this Sunday. Customers don’t need to do anything to receive the free data, it will happen automatically for all [mobile users].”
On Valentine’s Day. Now that will be a test for the network.
