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Technology news and Jobs 
Fuzzy Logic Optus cable cut? Think of your own backup plan
Fuzzy Logic Optus cable cut? Think of your own backup plan | Optus cable cut? Think of your own backup plan |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Thursday, 17 July 2008 | |
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An article in The Australian has shone light on the person responsible for cutting through Optus’ main fibre optic cable in Queensland, cutting off access to more than one million customers. Turns out it was a backhoe driver contracted to the Gold Coast City Council, an organisation that initially denied any responsibility but has since indicated that a “pumps and pipes” project it was working on caused the damage, despite checks to ensure no important cables or other underground infrastructure was in the way. Oops. Apparently Optus also had a fault in the hardware of its backup systems, which it was to fix on the very day the fibre optic cable accident occurred. I hope that Optus employees all went out to buy lottery tickets, because the chances of both networks going down at the same time have been called “one in a million”. The entire incident has certainly highlighted the vitally important nature of communications and the Internet to all facets of life. Cut us off from the ability to communicate, and it’s like an electricity blackout or no water coming out of the taps. So while Optus was able to quickly fix the problem in only a few hours, instead of days or weeks, consumers and businesses have a question to ask themselves: what should they do if something like that ever happens again? Ultimately the answer will depend on just how important it is to have access to the Internet or a telephone. For some, a day or two without the phone or the Internet is a blessing. For others, it represents big financial losses that will be easily absorbed by some, but could easily send some broke too, depending on their circumstances – and the length of any outage. Already the Optus incident is said to have cost Queenslanders “millions of dollars”, so the cost of any Plan B needs to be factored in to what you’ll have to pay in lost business should anything similar happen again. So, what would my “Plan B”... be? It's not rocket science, but some pretty simple stuff that you nevertheless might not have considered or have forgotten. Please read on to page 2. |
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