Slashdot Mirror
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."
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)
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.
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.
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.
In some ways, I agree, but every bit of redundancy costs a lot, esp. if it involves laying more underwater cabling to Australia and Asia. Two lines are fine most of the time because the likelyhood of the second one going down before the first can be repaired is extremely small such that it is practically a fluke, like this.
It happens occasionally, and there are excesses to try to fight against it, quad redundancy is quite a lot and probably overpaying by twice for something that almost never happens. Is it worth paying twice as much to add another "nine" to the uptime? I had some line problems myself, while frustrating, I just did other things instead.
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.
I keep telling this to my fiance. I need at least four prostitutes to back her up. I don't know what bothers her more, the idea of being 'backed up' or being 'redundant'.
I call bullshit, I'm weeping croc tears here - it's now happened twice now in the past 6 months for me (in Dunedin), previous one was a backhoe someone put thru the fiber north of here, you may have redundancy where you live but Telecom here is always one accident away from me not being able work at any time. Given the way they are making money hand over fist from their monopoly you'd think they'd spend some money on infrastructure (I can call Auckland from my US Vonage account for 1/3 what it costs to use my telecom phone - the town is plastered with fliers for 1c/min calls to China, why not Auckland?)
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!
This happened on Monday. Today is Friday.
With the lines down there was no way to communicate the outage to the outside world.
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
"They are also fat and delicious." The Maori people, or the rats?
Note for moderators: "I don't get it" == "Off-Topic" evaluates as false.
Parent is quoting the lyrics to the theme song from the movie of the same name. The movie's title character is... wait for it... a rat.
The reference is made even more timely given that the song was performed by Michael Jackson, who's been in the news quite a bit lately.
Parent might or might not be be indulging in copyright infringement rather than "fair use", and might or might not be sufficiently entertaining to deserve a +1 Funny mod, but does not by any reasonable stretch of the imagination merit -1 Off-Topic.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.