Telkom explains 10111 outage

18 hours 18 minutes to repair an fibre optic cable??? When I was in the UK I once dropped a manhole cover into a telecoms chamber. It broke the FO cable inside and instantly cut off about 20 000 phones (IIRC) I was still on the phone trying to get hold of the right person to report the damage to when a van pulled up and started repairing. It took about an hour to repull about a 1/4mile of cable and it was as good as new even though the network was rerouted anyway seconds after the strike resulting in only a few seconds of downtime.
 
it is rather a joke i must admit. but then again they take over a month to install a normal phone on a digital exchange, this being an exchange where they dont need to visit the house, they just enable it via their system. it still takes a month
 
Haven't they heard of forward planning?

Also, why was the cables external, and not underground? Sure, might be cheaper and all that, but... I don't think a mission-critical link such as this one should needlessly be exposed to risk (graders etc).

Way to go, Telkom...
 
Of course if the 10111 number did work - is there any chance the cops would respond ?

or would you get the now all too familiar "Eish, there is no vehicle"..... ?
 
They also need better contingency plans, maybe Neotell must provide them with a CDMA backup that can at least sustain 50% of the load in emergency situations, also can't Vodacom and MTN be part of this solution, I do not think that a critical system like the main police contact centre should ever go down. They must have 1st, 2nd and 3rd contingency backup lines to sustain it self in emergency situations!

To me this is quite worrying and opens up the public and the police to severe risk.

I can just see a terrorist getting an orgasm about this neglect of planning.
 
I think this incident falls under "worst case scenario" for Telkom / SAPS.

I mean, think about it, how many SERIOUS crimes were committed in that time and people don't EVER know their 'closest' police stations number so they call 10111 instead.

I hope everyone has learnt a lesson from this.

I suggest all of you take the number for your nearest police station and save it on your phone as the primary number.

I remember when I phoned 10111, the lady on the phone gave me a number for the CPT Police station and told me that it would be faster to phone that number than it would be to phone 10111.
 
gdiza said:
I think this incident falls under "worst case scenario" for Telkom / SAPS.

I mean, think about it, how many SERIOUS crimes were committed in that time and people don't EVER know their 'closest' police stations number so they call 10111 instead.

I hope everyone has learnt a lesson from this.

I suggest all of you take the number for your nearest police station and save it on your phone as the primary number.

I remember when I phoned 10111, the lady on the phone gave me a number for the CPT Police station and told me that it would be faster to phone that number than it would be to phone 10111.
Click to expand...

The problem with this, is that even if you phone your nearest police station, no one answers.

About 2 months ago, someone tried to break into my neighbors car, so I phoned the Sandton Police Station, and no one answers. In the mean time, my mother phoned our security company, and within 4 min, there were 4 armed response units outside my house. At which point, I hang up and gave up trying to get hold of the police
 
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The_Librarian said:
Haven't they heard of forward planning?

Also, why was the cables external, and not underground? Sure, might be cheaper and all that, but... I don't think a mission-critical link such as this one should needlessly be exposed to risk (graders etc).Way to go, Telkom...
Click to expand...
Rural areas are very vulnerable as most of the platteland has overhead F/O
running between towns, cheaper yes
 
Alchemist said:
In the mean time, my mother phoned our security company, and within 4 min, there were 4 armed response units outside my house. At which point, I hang up and gave up trying to get hold of the police
Click to expand...

You see, this is nice if you have a security company such as ADT on call.
I don't, so the police is my next best option.
Imagine I phone ADT and tell them someone is breaking into a car, I'm sure they'll ask me for some sort of ID, you know - to check if I'm a 'customer' of theirs, if not... I'm sure they'll say 'sorry, not our problem' :(

Which will probably irratate me.
We all need to work together to beat this crime thing.

BACK ON TOPIC THOUGH.
There are ways around this type of disaster, people just don't know about them (like, security company or calling your nearest police station)
 
telkom actually fixed it now that is a good thing....
 
Those repair times are inexcusable. That's why Telkom damages the cellphone companies' reputations when there are link failures.

1. Provide redundant routing. When the link is ordered with 99.95% availability as it should be with a critical link, Telkom is obliged to provide a fully divergent, spare link. This link must be 100% free of other traffic and always ready to carry the failed traffic volumes.
2. Cutover - this is handled by the traffic systems and takes less than 10 seconds. Obviously they did not have spare capacity to divert to - See 1.
3. Repair - 18 hours. What a joke.
 
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