Xtra — Tag

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.

Telecom cried that it was going to go the fastest it could, uncapped (except during peak times). However, a major botch up to the traffic shaping as meant everything, including normal web traffic, was being shaped. Today Telecom has had to refund 60,000 customers $7.5 to 8.8 million. The credit for those who have been on the plan since the beginning (December) will get up to $160 back.

Telecom are no longer accepting new sign ups to the plan until an internal technical review is completed.

The plan was launched in December in response to being forced to uncap bandwidth. It provided a list of services that were going to be shaped, including peer to peer (P2P) applications.

This is going to hit them where it hurts.

• Read the press release

This morning Breakfast discussed the new Xtra broadband plans with both sides of the coin - Computerworld editor Paul Brislen about how the plans are anti-competitive, and then the General Manager of Telecom Wholesale who was trying to defend the plans.

Once again Paul Henry makes his mark in what was an amusing interview to the GM who kept trying to say how much better the wholesale rates are.

There is also a bit of talk about the Annette Presley and ex-husband fiasco of last week with Paul Brislen.

Earlier this week Xtra had unveiled its new range of broadband plans. All fullspeed, just different caps and upload speeds. The most interesting of which is the Go Large plan - fullspeed download, 128kbps upload, but you can eat as much as you want for $49.95. But, the catch is they manage your transfers between 4pm and midnight for any peer to peer software (which means it’ll be given lower priority). Also, if you constantly download more than 700MB between those times, expect a call from them giving you a different, more expensive, plan.

• Full details