Optus Outage - How is it affecting you?

[Lynda2475]

A sensible approach and one I know Optus follows when pushing changes out to stores, normally try at one or two to ensure technical and training bugs ironed out.

But if the leaks on Whirlpool are to be believed this was a change to routers controlling access to the main data centre, you cant in that case have some with one config and some with another as they are all parsing rules for the same backend system and need consistent certificates and settings.

 

[gaz0303]

I thoroughly enjoyed my morning without internet or phone. I might switch off my modem on the weekend and tell the kids optus are having another outage.

 

[Quickstatus]

Heard that remotes for electric cars use Optus sim

Tesla cars use Telstra Sim. The key to operate the car is RFID or if using the phone key - Bluetooth. SIM card /internet not required to unlock an electric car. If both RFID card and phone dies / lost - just borrow a mobile phone with access, download app, login to remote unlock

configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication

So simple to take down significant communications in a country

Someone will lose their job over this one.

The SingTel chairman has been in town since Monday. Not good look for CEO

 

[marki]

It goes to show that an expensive mobile device or phone/smartphone can be rendered a brick and be worthless. (in essence)

 

[Quickstatus]

People who think that switching providers are assuming that the same won't happen where the "grass is greener" and are making the same mistake that got them into strife in the first place. If their internet / phone connection is critical, suggest more than one provider. And the second provider should not be a reseller of the first...

 

[Quickstatus]

expensive mobile device or phone/smartphone can be rendered a brick

Can still take great photos

 

[Pushka]

Tesla cars use Telstra Sim. The key to operate the car is RFID or if using the phone key - Bluetooth. SIM card /internet not required to unlock an electric car. If both RFID card and phone dies / lost - just borrow a mobile phone with access, download app, login to remote unlock

So simple to take down significant communications in a country

The SingTel chairman has been in town since Monday. Not good look for CEO

I heard that the Optus sim is much cheaper, like about $45 a month cheaper so that's inserted into many. I know plenty of people with EVs but none of them a Tesla.

Post automatically merged: Nov 8, 2023

People who think that switching providers are assuming that the same won't happen where the "grass is greener" and are making the same mistake that got them into strife in the first place. If their internet / phone connection is critical, suggest more than one provider. And the second provider should not be a reseller of the first...

Diversification. Which means bundling no longer a thing.

 

[Milefest]

This is the last straw for me, the arrogance for them to hit me with an invalid late payment fee when they won't reimburse my phone bill for a service they can't provide

 

[justinbrett]

I'm amazed Optus has had 10 million customers. I would have guessed half that.

 

[moa999]

That Jimmy Rees video is very funny.
And according to a Telstra person I talked too today pretty darn accurate.

They saw Optus's BGP system go absolutely crazy at 4am, then dead.. and tend to assume it was an upgrade gone wrong.

Reportedly Optus's corporate network is the same as the public network so that also went down and most employees couldn't be contacted. Key employees do have SIMs on other providers but many of those details are contained in address books on the corporate servers. Ultimately had to send employees to the actual servers to deploy fixes.

They did note however that these core upgrades are dangerous by nature - you typically have to do them all at once, and while you can typically test them in a test environment, it doesn't have the complexities or load that a dynamic environment does.

 

[Quickstatus]

bundling

Just exponentially increases the risk

 

[Quickstatus]

Optus sim is much cheaper, like about $45

The Tesla cars only use Telstra sim -they come included with the car with no ongoing fees - for standard connectivity. Premium connectivity (music, internet browsing, live traffic) costs $10/m extra

 

[Pushka]

The Tesla cars only use Telstra sim -they come included with the car with no ongoing fees - for standard connectivity. Premium connectivity costs $10/m extra

So Tesla bundled Tesla!

 

[downgraded]

no such thing as an actual landline anymore,

Oh yes there is. Melbourne fringe that's been moved onto NBN satellite still has copper phone lines for starters.

 

[Quickstatus]

Tesla bundled Tesla!

I wonder if at some point in time it will just use Starlink

 

[Lynda2475]

Melbourne fringe would be on fixed wireless not satellite - different sort of dish. There may be a handful of exceptions (a stay of execution for some existing copper landline services until alternative is practical) but 98% of the population do not have and can no longer get an old school copper landline (the copper provided the power from the exchange so is why it worked in a blackout).

Optus certainly doesn't provide copper landlines, they also opted out of selling nbn fixed wireless or nbn satellite. There was a time Optus resold Helstra landlines, but if in a Optus cable area they always pushed to use their own cable/hfc lines. However, nbn acquired then ditched optus cable network.

There is no plan for Australia to revert to copper landlines as K88 was proposing.

 

[downgraded]

Melbourne fringe would be on fixed wireless not satellite

Again, not true. You were speaking in definitives in your earlier post. There is a swathe of peri-urban NE Melbourne that has been assigned satellite, and Hyperwave is doing nicely out of that decision.

 

[Lynda2475]

peri-urban

Well Melbourne famously redefined it's boundaries to appear larger, but realistically these areas are rural, not really part of the city nor even greater suburban Melbourne

You can't request new copper landline services, the nbn was forced to maintain a minuscule number of existing ones. So for all intents and purposes landlines aren't a thing anymore.

Also irrelevant to Optus outage as those services not provided via Optus infrastructure.

 

[downgraded]

Well Melbourne famously redefined it's boundaries

Inside the taxi boundary according to the melways of 20 years ago and inside lockdown metro suburbs.
Don't deny Optus don't provide the best service in the area. When the lights went out yesterday I went and bought a $2 Boost Sim and now have access to full Telstra network with 5G (Optus coverage is currently still only 4G when it doesn't stop to 3G).

 

[RooFlyer]

Inside the taxi boundary according to the melways of 20 years ago and inside lockdown metro suburbs.
Don't deny Optus don't provide the best service in the area. When the lights went out yesterday I went and bought a $2 Boost Sim and now have access to full Telstra network with 5G (Optus coverage is currently still only 4G when it doesn't stop to 3G).

Yeah I think the absolute statements before were obviously off the mark. You would’ve noticed the goalposts moving.

Perhaps perversely, I’m looking at getting a Optus network Sim in case of a similar outage by Telstra. Do you know of a product similar to your Boost but for Optus or others on their network?