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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."
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.
I lost a day's work, but they still charged me for my DSL even though I couldn't use it - you figure out who's being ripped off here!