Hi, I live near Warrnambool. A town of about 30,000 people and a major telecommunications hub for SW Victoria . Last Thursday a fire broke out in the telephone exchange building. Somehow, either through penny saving or through bad planning the fire also destroyed the back up systems. As a result approx 60,000 people were without any means of communication unless they had an Optus mobile. After a week there are still 30,000 people without landlines and so most of these have no Internet facilities and of the other 30,000 although they have phone they still have no Internet facilities.
In the first two days there was no eftpos at all and still today there is only limited eftpos facilities for the larger retailers. The banks could not dispense cash unless you were able to produce your bank details and some had a limit on the amount. Service stations would only dispense fuel for cash as did most shops as the manual systems are no longer used and the swipe machines are thrown out in most cases. There was a rush on Optus sims and phones and these sold out within a day. There was no way to ring the doctor or tell your employer that you were sick. People with health monitors and press alarms were unable to use them, back to base burglar alarms did not work.
Things are slowly getting back to normal. My mobile service was restored yesterday but I cannot use it for data services. I am still without a landline. Yesterday my wife's IPad got back on the air and I am using this to type this post. The economic percussions in this area of roughly 25,000 square kilometers is enormous. I understand that hurricanes, floods and earth quakes can do this type of damage but I am furious that a small fire can destroy a vital communications hub and potentially put lives at risk. Why no halon or CO2 gas dump in a computer room. Why no fire proof division between the backup system and the main system.
Whilst the technicians are working their butts off and doing a great job it has nearly exhausted the country's stock of spares and it may well be some weeks before things at back to normal.
Life without phone infrastructure sucks!!!
Cheers
Wbool63 near Warrnambool

wow, that is terrible! I certainly hope that the area has learned it's lesson and will rebuild with appropriate safety and backup systems!

Sorry to hear about your bad luck there. The lack of backup is most troubling. These types of issues sure bring to light our dependence on communication infrastructure when things go wrong.

2T , the federal government is launching an enquiry into the why's and how's but at this stage the rebuild is only for the working exchange. It is not up to the area to learn a lesson. Telstra is the biggest Telecommunications provider in the country and it has a virtual monopoly and does as it sees fit. I think there will be recommendations resulting from the enquiry (eventually) but it will be all too hard or too expensive to implement. I thought that redundancy in paths was the strong point of the Internet, but without backups all nodes are single points of failure.

this would be the perfect time for another company to make inroads...assuming there is enough business to steal from the current company to be worth the effort.