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Rats 'Cripple' NZ Web Access
An anonymous reader writes "Drat! It was the rat! Telephone, mobile and Internet access in New Zealand was disrupted over four hours after rats were found gnawing through cables. More than 100,000 customers were affected and even the country's stock exchange came to a standstill. Powerless to take action against the rats, Telecom New Zealand is seeking compensation from the electricity company it says is responsible for knocking out another pipeline which eliminated backup services. Nothing like a backup plan."
Binary independent redundancy is often not enough these days. Like this incident shows, a single backup system is not enough. You need at least four systems to have a somewhat reliable system.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
The real story is that the RIAA paid these rats to take down the lines, and if they have to take out some phone services to cut down on piracy, then so be it. Those sneaky sunsabitches, I'm watchin you RIAA/MPAA.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
And that's nothing like a backup plan...
Plans? We don't need no stinking plans!
This must hit a special nerve with New Zealanders, who are trying to eradicate rats wherever possible. There are three types of wild rats in New Zealand, and none of them really belong there: black rats were introduced in the 1860's, brown rats were introduced on Captain Cook's ship in 1760's, and Kiore rats were introduced by Maori settlers in the 960's (plus or minus).
Of course they're suing the power company. Lawyers won't sue the rats because of professional courtesy.
who ratted the out?
Yeah, blame the rats and the electric company for everyting. While you're at it, find the two-legged rats who couldn't bother to put in a redundant backup plan.
Telecom New Zealand is seeking compensation from the electricity company it says is responsible for knocking out another pipeline which eliminated backup services.
Surely the electricity company put clauses in the contract excluding them from liability for failures and damages caused by things outside of their control? I take it for granted that every big company offering services of any kind have clauses for those cases.
This happened on Monday. Today is Friday.
:)
It was a quiet day at work though
A good example why a monopoly is vulnerable, I was @ work during the outage, & so didnt really notice so much, but I hear it was very disruptive.
What are the odds of rats chewing through a main trunk cable on the same day a local power company cutting a second main trunk?
Go Away! Not for Sale
Thank god the sheep didn't rise up against their internet access or they'd have been in real trouble.
But the rodents will go unpunished
What?? How can they let them go unpunished? They need to at least go out and punish a few in a highly public manner to send the rest a message, kind of like when there is a shark attack and they go hunting for "the" shark that did it.... We can't let the rats get away with this!!
So Telecom is seeking compenstaion for fixing this. Fair enough you might say? The irony here is that Telecom has publicly stated they will not be paying *other* businesses for their losses due to the network going down.
To put this in perspective, much of the countrys EFTPOS system went down. Much of the countrys mobile network went down. Much of the countrys DSL network went down. That means, NO electronic sales transactions, NO websites, NO email, NO mobile calls. LOTS of lost productivity and sales here.
Even the friggin stock exchange went down - the 2nd time in a few weeks due to a Telecom fault! No wonder they don't want to compensate people - even Telecom doesn't have enough money for this.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
A dingo ate their cable.
...I for one welcome our new rat overloads.
Tell the Kiwis to make sure to pay him after he lures away the rats, or he'll take their kids too.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
Any other Puerto Rico players in the house thinking "man, and I thought having my 3 tobacco eaten by rats was bad, but internet, oh yeah".
The steering (rudder power and control) on those ships is 5 way redundant. 6 if you count manually cranking the rudders.
so... yeah... like that.
Lest we forget, Auckland lost power for 2 months in 1998, causing significant damage to the economy of the country. Perhaps the Kiwi just aren't able to handle utiliites?
All Blacks, bah! Go Springboks!!!
Demanding compensation from Telecom would be pointless. Suppose they do pay out to those who were affected. Do you know what happens the next month? Their service rates skyrocket to recoup the money they lost during the payouts. In the end, those who received such compensation would likely pay it back two or three times over.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I work for their competitor. Most people in operations here had nothing but sympathy - that kind of coincidence is nothing short of one in a million.
And it just goes to show: Murphy rules, stuff breaks. At least in this country most people are willing to accept that...
-- Your mother uses Emacs.
Good planning, rats!!!
hilarious
I work for a major freight company in the Southeast US. One day the power in our corporate office went out unexpectedly. Our backup generator didn't keep our power on, and we couldn't figure out what had happened... until we found a chunk of power cable outside that had the insulation chewed though by squirrels. Needless to say there was no squirrel to be found, but we named him Sparky anyway.
Indeed, there are economic repercussions from extra redundancy. That's where the free market steps it. It will result in redundancy equilibrium: the amount of redundancy the marketplace is willing to financially bare. In this case, there is a possibility that their two lines were not enough, and the redundancy equilibrium may now shift to three lines as a result of this systemic failure.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
As an avid Puerto Rico player, I have to say that "No, I didn't think that at all"... where do rats come into Puerto Rico? Are you referring to goods spoilage after a captain round? I'd always put that down to oxidation/rotting, but I guess rats would do it too...
is a cat named Bugsy. Them cats can be nasty to rats, but especially cats named Bugsy.
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/NL/FC31E734EFD D0739CC2570290016D8F1
Telecom is an American owned company.
The local loop they use to fleece NZ residents who use their sub-standard "broadband" (Telecom once tried to market 128k plans as broadband..) is in fact publically owned. As the NZ Commerce Commision has no balls Telecom remains in control of this and thus continue to be a greedy monopoly.
The above article should remove any doubt of this.
to the rats.
Actually, I love lawyers. They taste like chicken.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Didn't know they could chew through anything other than their client's money..........
Visualize Whirled P.'s
The rats would have been eaten or chased away if they'd invested in Cat 5 cable.
being the absolute best at finding cables, beating any other method by at least 2 orders of magnitude.
Like the most recent joke says "when lost, bury a short piece of cat5, then ask the backhoe operator the way home".
He will come and find the cat5, it would be a violation of Murphy's Law to do otherwise.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
I mean rat. That's the "in thing" these days. Bugs destroying hardware is so old sk00l!
We play them as rats, then you can make fun squeaking noises as they carry off your precious goods to the supply. We like it so much, that the squeaking noises are a mandatory house rule here.
I run all of my data over cat5 cables, and I can rely on them ALWAYS to keep the rats away.
I *knew* we shouldn't have used Room 101 for the server room!
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Does that mean that programmers in NZ will henceforth be Deratting software?
Everyone knows it was a robotic sheep experiment gone awry.
Is that the address of the girl who just dumped your sorry nerd ass, or are you a pedophile soliciting sexual deviancy from minors?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
If I recall correctly, Auckland has lost power once or twice and it just messed things up. Doing a little googling reveals this page : http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/misc/mercury .txt
Damn what a mess! I would not wish blackouts and or rats on anyone. I feel sorry for anyone dependant on electricity, since the local company really screwed the pooch. That goes double for interweb service, since I know what it feels like to go without...it sucks bigtime.
Hm, as for the rat population maybe they need to sell off some of those many millions of sheeps (40+ million, IIRC) and get some cats...a whole mess of cats.
Rats are VERY destructive and can gnaw through most materials with ease. Another fun fact is that they can swim for 1/4 mile underwater (and fly outta your toilet and bite you on the ass...yuck!).
Damn... tapping into the farmer's electricity wasn't enough. Now those smart bastards want high-speed internet access.
"Just out of curiosity, how big of a penis does that type of a rat have? I mean, you said the rat is delicious. I suppose you were talking about the body, but I'm asking about its penis. Could its penis be stuffed with its body meat to make a ratcock sausage?"
That has got to be one of the strangest questions I've ever heard. Why are you interested in the penis of a rat?. Why would you even think about making a rat-penis-sausage?. Please tell me your some kind of herbivore-penile-scientist.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I'll never be alone
And you my friend will see
You've got a friend in me
(You've got a friend in me)
Ben, you're always running here and there
(Here and there)
You feel you're not wanted anywhere
(Anywhere)
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
There's something you should know
You've got a place to go
(You've got a place to go)
I used to say, "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
(I used to say, "I" and "me")
(Now it's "us", now it's "we")
Ben, most people would turn you away
I don't listen to a word they say
They don't see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben
(A friend)
Like Ben
(Like Ben)
Like Ben
Less commentary, more dimensions, please.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
We should definately try these of the planet. I have too many bad run ins and they cost me a lot of money in damage.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
The Internet was designed to survive a nuclear attack, but as implemented by the greedy idiots in control of Telecom and TelstraClear, the internet in New Zealand can't even withstand an assault by frickin rat and some clown with a power tool.
Its really embarrassing, and sad, that these corporations' policies effectively deny the public in New Zealand a robust network infrastructure - Telecom and TelstraClear purposely depeered from various internet exchanges through which they could have easily redirected traffic during this outage, rendering it a non-event, because they can't stand the idea that people might run VOIP systems, cutting into their monopoly profits.
Its just really pathetic that their action has resulted in the biggest network outage
that I can remember, and instead of realising they probably should work with other network providers to ensure the internet in New Zealand is resistant to this type of 'attack' they just want to blame the power company.
Telecom, you suck.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
At least it wasn't sheep
Fibre optic cables are relatively expensive, say $60k/km rural & rising to up to >$1m/km downtown, so beyond two diverse cables is usually justifiable only where the traffic is very large (hint- not NZ), or where geography favours it (think a mesh of cities).
The availability with two cables can be 5 9s. Overall availability depends on how risk there is (most likely risk - construction near the cable e.g. new housing estates), and how fast the operations is fixing faults. Fixing a fault may take 3 - 12 hours, and it is when Field Ops gets a bit slack in fixing things that the risk rises dramatically. Theoretically this is very rare, but these double faults do happen (think Optus Melbourne - Sydney about 5 years ago - and periodically others).
As for compensation. In general those who constructed other facilities have a responsibility to check for the presence of others external plant (gas, elec, fibre optic) - In OZ: Dial before you dig. If you don't do this, then you are liable - and be sued for at a minimum costs. If you have, and the records are off, then you are probably OK. So, in this case it may be that the electricity company or their contractor did not check for other services (or most likely checked, but stuffed up anyway!).
Last year about this time over half of the Texas coastal bend lost service when a branch of the SS7 network got chopped. Cells, 'net backbones, CC validators, and paging services. Come to find out that a contractor screwed up on misjudging the lay of the "do not dig" marks laid out by MCI..
Feh!
The boss said "dig there".
The foreman said "dig there"
The backhoe driver dug there...
Three hours later the 5oclock news came rolling around with the contractors mugs plastered on the screens with the reporters wailing about the fruits of their labors.
Another three hours rolled past until the MCI crews managed to splice the cable back together and get things back on track.
FYI, there was (and most likely will not be) no backup in place in the South Texas region for the SS7 network.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Notice he replaced overlords for "overloAds" :)
+1, Original
"They are also fat and delicious." The Maori people, or the rats?
You completely fucked your own ass-backwards country then had to flee from it as a result. The rest of the world was silly enough to give you a new place to pollute with your loathsomeness.
And every Seth Effreeken "IT Expert" I ever met knows barely enough to start a game of Freecell, yet they still criticise those of us who have to clean up the messes they make with the systems they don't understand.
Fuck off.
Now I got it figured out. It's a money making machine with a one time investment. Perfect! The ACTUAL REAL plan: 1. Hire a bunch of rats to destroy the cables, and bring local internet down. 2. Pretend downtime didn't exist, and charge for it anyway. 3. Ignore customer complaints on the matter. 3. Post on slashdot saying the RIAA/MPAA did it. 4. Sue your local electrical company alleging lost profits. 5. Let the rats go unpunished, so they can do it again. 6. Profit!
Please tell me what the ratties say!
Please tell me what the ratties say!
Rats...Over the dishes!
...it raises the IQ of both nations.
One in a million? So telecom says. But you're talking about a loop going around the whole North Island. That's a lot of cable. At any point in the loop it is subject to being dug up, eaten by rats, or affected by an equipment malfunction. The odds of any of those are, what?, once every 30 days. You probably never notice any single outage because of the redundancy. But the odds of a dual failure, hence are 1/30days*1/30=1/900days=1/2.4 years. Hardly one in a million. For it to be that there would be a fault only once every thousand days. And that is not the telecom I know and, well, have to use.
--
Working to provide reliable VPS hosting
Years ago, my parents called me because the power to half of their house went dead.
I checked the breaker and it was fine, and power was also leaving it.
So I started tracing the wiring from the Garage back the the Main circuit Panel on the other side of the house.
Up into the attic I went, still finding no power in the 08 gauge feeder cable, until I got to the outside wall just above the mains panel.
At this point I was truly surprised, because somewhere inside that 36 inches of wall, there just had to be a break in the wire!
The next part was really FUN , since I had to use a sledge hammer to break open the stucco wall, outside and above the mains panel to see what was going wrong.
When I discovered the cause, I was totally shocked, a rat had chewed through the hot 08 gauge wire of the 3 wire cable!
I could see the teeth marks on the wire, and tiny copper chips laying below it on the fire block in the wall.
The rat didn't get electrocuted because it never touched the other conductors, which would have killed it instantly.
It's almost too weird for words, but I saved a 12 inch piece of cable where the break was to show to my clients (electrical contractor).
Gee... they sure have been unlucky in the last two weeks!
If they can attribute an error to an act of god people will be more forgiving.
They're abusing this and lying. Rats did not knaw through a fucking fibre optic cable.
Yet instead of looking at ways to prevent this occurence in the future, they turn to litigation, working for their own material gain as opposed to the public welfare.
Yes, the unnamed power company should discuss the issue with the pole-digger, but I'm sure the employee didn't maliciously cause the problem.
Isn't this somewhat similar to a fiber line being cut by a farmer, here in the states, awhile back? Perhaps making it so one single individual does not have the access to disrupt services on such a large scale would be a better solution.
It's only a fluke because the electricity company did not live upto their bargain. What if you have a contract to keep backup tapes. Suddenly they come to your door for the tapes, and you say. "Hey, just because your hardrive was eaten by a moose, does not mean you should take it out on me. G
...how traffic on ports other than 80 was still able to get through.
Shame uncle Tim didn't pick a more robust port.
Ok first thing first
/. , being famous as it is, post the "News" on Friday. Good job, even the Inquirer beat you.
1. The accident(or incident) happened at Monday, and
2. That being said, here is a much more detail account of the event.
Rat blamed for latest Telecom blackout
untitled image
21.06.05
By Bernard Orsman and Gareth Vaughan
A rat is suspected as being one of two culprits who paralysed the country's telecoms network yesterday, closing the Stock Exchange and stopping shoppers using Eftpos machines.
The second was a Powerco contractor who "nicked" a fibre optic cable near Waverley in South Taranaki while drilling a hole to replace a power pole at 10.40am.
The "one in a million" coincidence of damage to two fibre optic cables affected more than 100,000 Telecom customers from 10.48am until 3.18pm.
The greatest disruption was in Wellington and Taranaki. Services were also lost in Auckland, Palmerston North and in the South Island.
Trading on the Stock Exchange was brought to a halt from 11.01am until 4pm. The exchange stayed open for an extra 30 minutes until 5.30pm.
Eftpos disruption hurt shoppers and retailers. The online auction site TradeMe reported a significant reduction in traffic between 11am and 3pm.
Air travellers experienced delays of 25 minutes or more when the loss of internet and email forced Air NZ to manually check-in passengers.
Telecom spokesman John Goulter said it was possible a rat was the cause of the broken fibre optic cable on a railway bridge, about 5km north of Upper Hutt. Rodent damage was a problem inside the 10cm steel ducts that carry fibre optic cables, he said.
"We haven't ruled it [a rat] out."
Another possible cause was the cable coming adrift and being carried away in the river.
Mr Goulter said the odds of the two main fibre optic cables running up the west and east sides of the North Island failing at the same time were about one in a million.
Telecommunications Users Association chief executive Ernie Newman said Telecom rated well for network and service reliability and he did not see it as a sign of a trend.
However, brokers were annoyed, especially as it was the second Telecom fault in a week to halt trading.
One broker said stoppages added to uncertainty for the market and investors "hate uncertainty".
Stock Exchange spokeswoman Rowan MacRae would not be drawn into detail about compensation.
"Our key thing has been to focus on getting the market back up and running as quick as we can and to let international markets know what has happened here today. We will worry about the other issues later."
Retailers Association Auckland regional manager Russell Sinclair said given that many people no longer carried cash, "It certainly bites" when Eftpos went down.
Communications Minister David Cunliffe said "getting two accidents of this type at the same time is a freak occurrence".
Last week about 2000 Telecom customers were affected when a contractor accidentally cut a cable between Waihi and Whangamata. The eastern side of the Coromandel Peninsula and Great Barrier Island were affected.
Wow, what a dumbass for stealing "a shiny cable" that is under the ground. Wouldn't he , you know, know that the line might be there for a reason?
bloody cabling is so crappy here i cant get dsl :)
serves em right
go rats- umm thats the furry ones i mean not the 2 legged ones
It was French rats, with scuba gear.
Remember their "Five nines of reliability on our core network" ads?
Well, someone did the maths, and a four-hour outage means they're not due to have a core network failure for over another half century. Somehow I can't quite see it.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
of course, without reading the article, what do i do? i've visited securityfocus and symantec to dig out info on worm/virus named "rat"...
please, someone stick a fork in my ass, 'cuz i think, i'm done.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Check his other posts -- specifically the ones in which he asks about "ratcock sausages".
More redundancy would be nice, but it's difficult to justify when there are only 4million people total in the whole country (that might even include the bods overseas). Big chunks of the country are devoid of people so justifying the cost of running multiple levels of redundacy is hard ... and we don't want to pay even more for our phone subscription ... bad enough as it is.
What all the published articles fail to mention is that there is a third fibre running from one end of the country to the other. It is owned by Telstra, the competition. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that Telstra and Telecom have such a level of psychotic hatred for one another, that they cannot talk to each other except in a Court room. Thus the very idea of setting up the routers so that all three of the fibres are shared is such an anathema that it just won't happen without Government regulation and intervention. Needless to say the Government is essentially a bunch of ignorent wimps who can no more understand the technicalities of the situation than fly. So it won't happen and we will have to suffer the consequencies of serious telecom infrastructure failure from time to time.
It's time for the little peoples of the world to take back ownership of their infrastructures by whatever means necessary. Fighting talk may be, but many of us in the rest of the world are sick of being fleeced by the avaricious in the powerful countries. Oh shit! - I forgot - big countries make up excuses to invade little ones so they can steal their natural resources.
damn mynoch ... always munchin on the power cables.
my masterplan is on it's way to completion. First New Zealand. Then Asia. Finally ... THE WORLD !
Muahahahaha....
This leads to problems where even though there is multiple physical lines from A to B (sometimes the backups go via C or D) that still doesnt gaurantee that things will be ok in the advent of a line dropout because the big telcos all over the world are greedy and will not implement the necessary links and setup to enable all these networks to talk to each other and use each other as a backup when needed.
There seems to be something about the New Zealand psyche that just doesn't understand the concept of separate routing and protection of cables.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Yes. The entire New Zealand psyche, I'm sure. Way to over-generalise.
In the mid-90s - okay most of your are too young, there was some major disruption of the Internet when rats chewed through a major fibre route linking Mae East with Mae West run by MCI.
The Internet can route around such outages, but sometimes the traffic moves too slowly for many services to continue working effectively.
Since we have "bugs in our code" will people start saying I have "rats in my connection"?
There seems to be something about the New Zealand psyche that just doesn't understand the concept of separate routing and protection of cables.
Oh we understand all right, it's just that the concept of "She'll be right, mate" carries more weight. If it's not likely to fail, how are we going to exercise our God-given right to repair it using nothing but twine and 8-guage fencing wire?
This is where the serious fun begins.
When next week's headline is: 'Bats Cripple Wireless Web Access', that is not a dupe. Different rodent, different medium.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
In other news, NZ police investigating widespread power outages have announced that saboteurs may be to blame. Apparently they found traces of Horlicks in the donkey.
L u c k i l y ,
t h e b a c k u p
s a t e l l i t e
l i n k k i c k e d i n
a u t o m a t i c a l l y .
T h e l a t e n c y ' s
n o t g r e a t b u t
a t l e a s t i t
k e e p s m e o f f
C o u n t e r s t r i k e .
I went to college with a guy who later went to work for one of the major backbone providers in the US. He claims that their standard response included having an armed "entry team" clear the area before the techs could get in.
He had great stories about how one guy on the team didn't have his carry permit yet, and thus was given a huge can of pepper spray which he brandished like it was the only thing standing between him and impending doom.
My friend did a great job described how this "entry team" would kick in the door to some wiring vault somewhere, guns drawn, flashlights out, like some nerdy SWAT team, even though the "enemy" was almost always a rat or squirrel staring back at them.
I have no idea if any of this is true, but it made a great story. Especially the details about how the armed guys always told the pepper-spray guy that one day, they were going to come up against some knife-wielding anarchist, who would gleefully cry "Ah-ha! Pepper-boy takes the point again!" as he fell upon them. (Best said in a corny fake French accent)
good thing this didn't happen in america --
where rats are now terrorists too...
Theo? I didn't know Theo was in New Zealand.
was an actual name of a "safety case" when designing a new Air Traffic Control facility.
"Cattle in the Lobby" was another fun one.
C'mon- how about the great NorthEast US blackout ? It didn't happen in the middle ages, guys.
We have no right to act superior.
Infrastructure systems like power, telcom, water, etc. are all built on the backs of earlier systems. I mean, some water systems in EU still use elements of acqueducts that the Romans laid.
Like a chain, the infrastructures are as strong as the weakest link. Netting and redundancy are all very nice, but most governments don't have the funds to do it. Would you be willing to pay 90% taxes so that your local govt could tear out all your old wires, pipes, etc. and put in shining new triple redundant systems ?
No. So we plan for the occasional outage, and move on.
Figuring the cost of redundancy and trying to save money by deciding not to have a redundant backup is the key. The trouble begins when the cost is explained to management and they freak and decide it's too expensive. Then when the thing that almost never happens, happens (Mr. Murphy's Law) the cost of the downtime is usually much higher.
Take for example a network SAN used to store 30+ Unix servers data. Talking about web servers and various DB's. Sure the SAN is redundant but the network switch leading to the SAN was not. i.e. instead of two switches in a failover configuration there was only one. That switch went berserk and everything went down. We're talking about all of the public side mission critical websites along with the databases and several Intranet systems that were also mission critical. The outage lasted most of the day while we waited on Cisco to rush a replacement switch driven by a technician from the next state over.
In the meantime, customers could not view their valuable data, third party business users could not access the data. Internal workflow was impacted. I suspect it cost a few million all said and done. All for the cost of an extra Cisco Fiber Channel switch which would have cost an additional $25,000.00. Sure hindsight is always 20/20. The risk was not properly calculated...
Now scale this up to what New Zealand went through, the outage seriously impacted the economy! Sure it would have cost millions more to have extra redundancies but then again, the outage caused by rats chewing through some cables wouldn't have brought the country to a halt either!
Having worked in telecom during the tech boom, a lot of conduit is sold with external conductors. You pass a low voltage on the outside of the conduit - it's called rodent protection. Works like a charm.
This is the first I've heard of rodents actually chewing through a major cable though. I thought rodent protection has very common for major conduits.
I'm actually surprised they didn't try to take legal action against the rats...
Enjoy an e-piphany
Looks like Douglas Adams was right on the money!
"Persistence is annoying success." - ghee22 11:28:1999 - 10:53:PM
Eircome the former monopoly and national telecom company in Ireland aslo advertised ISDN as "broadband". They should have been taken to court for false advertising.
This story is very interesting. I didn't think in this "modern day world" it was possible for something like this to happen. It really scares me since in the US it seems like the power grid gets more and more overloaded all the time.
CALL BEFORE YOU DIG!!
If I may, and I'm just thinking out loud here, I suspect the difference is that the network switch you refer to was owned by the same company that lost the few million dollars, so the $25,000 investment may have been worth it because a one time cost $25,000 is much better than the at least one-time cost of a new switch ($25,000) plus the service/support charge to have a tech drive from another state plus the lost revenue ($1,000,000). The losses greatly exceeded the amount of money needed to provide a backup.
On the other hand, the New Zealand telco isn't directly out of all the money that was lost in failed business transactions. They're pretty much out the money required to repair the lines. They didn't directly loose millions (billions?) of dollars, they just had their link go down and had to restore it. So investing however much money in additional lines and hardware may not make financial sense to them. Since they didn't loose much money, the losses did not exceed the amount of money redundancy would cost.
Sure it's dumb, but who'd expect anything else?
Don't forget 1998 -- there was a major, prolonged power outage in Auckland central city, that went on for weeks: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/misc/mercury .txt
We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone. -management
You don't expect me to write the idea here, do you? Does NZ have patents on "methods"?
I'll jurt give you a hint: it's biological, it has three letters and it rhymes with "rat"...
Well i moved away from auckland last year, to the lower part of south island, and this didn't affect my internet access at all :)
And to everyone out there from other countries, telecom is evil evil evil...
Most of us have datacaps of 10gb, if you download more then this you either get charged extra, or your speed gets cut to dial up speed (5kb\s or 10kb\s). The most common speed is 256K, which costs around $50 a month.
1mb plans are about $90-100 a month, most with the same limited cap of only 10gb !
Oh, and you have to pay a $100 switching fee to change to a different ISP, a $100 connection fee to get connected in the first place, and $40 for a phoneline from the evil that is telecom.
prices = NZ$
Do not anger the Karma Whores, for they don't bathe often, and might decide to come visit you in person. -Ryan Amos
It's also important to realise (with the power failure) that it only affected the inner city, not the entire metropolitan area. A number of city blocks, not a general blackout of an entire city.
Nice generalisation, but no. What there is in NZ is a willingness by utility companies to save money any way they can (at least since they were all privatised), whether that means fewer redundancies or cutting back on infrastructure upgrades. And I really doubt that situation is any different anywhere else in the world.