Last night, home was struck by the Telecom broadband outage. But I didn’t know it… usually I just call up Xtra and check the network status message. It said there was no problem with the network, so I thought it was a brief outage. Today it was still out. I had a quick check of everything, the router claimed it was connected, and Xtra claimed there was no problem with the network - until I pressed the 1 button.
At first, I got a little prompt telling me there was a problem with people in the greater Auckland area and technicians were working to resolve the issue. I still held on the line to get a human, and I got one after half a minute. He informed me that there was an issue, and it was nationwide. Better yet, it started at 10.30am yesterday morning.
So, let’s get this:
- First, Xtra’s call line claims there is no issue.
- Then, when waiting for a human, it says there is in the greater Auckland area.
- Then said human said that it was nationwide.
I queried about this obvious lack of communication, with the guy telling me that people are knowing so there must be some sort of message out there. I once again pointed out that the Xtra status message tells me nothing, he still doesn’t seem to quite register what I had said and that people were calling to query if they still had internet (people do that?). In the end I gave up.
The problem involved phone exchange equipment and it ended up having all broadband customers lose their broadband for about 15 minutes – when this happened there was a friendly message notifying everyone of the outage and what they were doing the moment I called the helpdesk number.
Just because you don’t tell us there is a problem on your system Telecom, doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
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