Cable cuts demand quick responses & better deals from telcos
In Queensland yesterday, two of Telstra’s fibre-optic cables at Bellbird Park, near Ipswich, were damaged during road works being carried out by a local construction company. These cables carry telephony, internet and mobile traffic to thousands of customers in the area.
Normally, an outage like this wouldn't even rate a mention but due to one of our competitors experiencing a major cable cut in the same State last week, there is currently a heightened interest in how telcos recover from these incidents.
Shortly after yesterday’s damage occurred, most of our network traffic was switched to an alternate route to minimise the customer impact, while technicians on the ground worked to repair the cables.
Although two important fibre-optic cables were damaged, the resulting outage affected a much smaller number of customers than it could have because of three crucial characteristics of our network.
- It is architected with in-built redundancy by some of the best engineers in the country;
- It is monitored around the clock by experts in their field;
- It is maintained by a technical workforce committed to customer service.
Telstra’s large and diverse network is monitored and supported 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, through our Global Operations Centre. There, we can detect faults immediately – before customers are even aware of them – and move quickly to re-route traffic and, where required, mobilise technicians to restore affected services.
With telecommunications playing an increasingly important part in our everyday lives, customers are demanding quicker response times and a better deal from their provider. Similarly, businesses need a provider they can rely on; one who can respond quickly and has the technical expertise and equipment to quickly mobilise and restore services with a minimum of fuss. Telstra delivers this.