Optus Mobile immobile in Brisbane

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 06 August 2008 12:46

IT Industry - Market

iTWire reader “Bris-Vegas” followed up at 4.34pm that “You're not the only one... and I'm mad as a cut snake!! "No Network Coverage" and "No Connection" seems to be permanently on my phone screen....”

Optus Director of Government and Corporate Affairs, Maha Krishnapillai, has been speaking on radio confirming that Optus’ Brisbane voice network is down and is being fixed.

Naturally you’d expect that Optus would be working to prevent things like this happening again, but outages do occur and they can be unpredictable – after all, surely everyone has been through at least one at some stage in their lives.

So... while Optus customers won’t have been happy with different outages over the past few weeks, and will be happy when it inevitably goes back to normal, Optus is obviously fully aware of the implications that outages bring, and might lose some customers.

The problem is that no-one is immune, and the best way to protect yourself is to have some kind of backup plan.

In a previous article entitled “Optus cable cut? Think of your own backup plan”, I go through some of the simple things you can do to have alternate telephony and wireless Internet connectivity, whether through pre-paid mobile phones, wireless modems and VoIP.

I don’t go through backup plans for water or power outages, but solar power, battery storage and water filtering technologies are all available and constantly improving.

An update from Optus on the outage when we get it, hopefully soon.