Update 22 May 2018: Telstra has advised a software fault was the reason, details in this iTWire article.
Original story continues:
Update 21 May 2018: Neither Sky News nor ABC News 24 covered Wright's doorstop live. Presumably there will be snippets in tonight's news, or later on Sky or ABC News 24. Why Telstra didn't think to stream this doorstop live to its own Twitter page, I don't know. It would have been a great thing to do and to see, if only Telstra had thought of doing it.
Telstra has posted a tweet with a smidgeon of additional info:
Our 3G and 4G voice and data traffic are approaching typical daily levels but we're still working to resolve intermittent issues or delayed call connection for some customers. We're still investigating the root cause.
— Telstra (@Telstra) May 21, 2018
Original story continues:
A few minutes ago as I type, Telstra emailed me to state that it is holding a doorstop interview on what happened to its mobile network, with Telstra Group MD of Networks, Mike Wright, to explain the situation.
This is to explain the outage that iTWire colleague Sam Varghese wrote about this morning, and which I followed up on not long ago, here.
Being based normally in both Sydney and Canberra, and typing this at Sunday 11.10pm in Nashville local time as I prepare for a tech conference later this week, Brisbane is something I could never have managed to get to by 2.30pm Monday afternoon.
Then I realised Telstra's network is having an outage, and unless it is fixed in Brisbane, or that location has access to strong Wi-Fi, I rather cheekily suggested that Optus and Vodafone pre-paid SIMs were available to help them out with the live streaming situation.
Now, the media scrum and Q&A will presumably be beamed live to Sky News and ABC News 24, so you can likely watch what is happening there, and by means of a VPN, I too shall see if I can listen to Mike.
Update: It's 2.22pm in Australia, and Sky News is showing Parliament live.
Update 2: ABC News 24 is also showing Parliament live, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull droning on about "Australian character" – which he didn't show a smidgeon of to his former leader, sadly.
But my suggestion still stands, especially with the update above – why doesn't Telstra stream this press conference itself?
It has the technology. It doesn't require a $6 million or billion-dollar bionic man or woman to do the job. It doesn't even require a $600 smartphone – a much cheaper one will do the job.
I suspect, however, that Telstra won't do it which is a shame, especially considering it is a communications company with plenty of its own channels.
Here's the content of the original email sent to me:
Good afternoon. Telstra Group Managing Director, Networks, Mike Wright will be available to provide an update on recovery of Telstra’s mobile services, following disruption that occurred earlier today.
WHEN: 2:30pm today, 21st May
WHERE: 275 George Street, Brisbane (meet in the corridor between buildings – see picture below)
Update 22 May 2018: Telstra has advised a software fault was the reason, details in this iTWire article.
