Telecom New Zealand Outage
June 23rd, 2010Update: Vodafone 3G vs Telecom XT
Here’s an outstanding technical comparison between the two national mobile broadband systems that are available in New Zealand:
—End Update—
Update: Telecom XT Is Still Not Working, I’m Trying Vodafone Now
I wrote out my Telecom saga, but thought, “Nobody wants to read this.” I’ll boil it right down instead:
Telecom now thinks that the reason why I can’t get any data through the connection has something to do with the SIM card. Signal strength definitely isn’t the issue. I can have maximum signal, line of sight to the tower, with the client connected, but no data moves through it; web, email, ping, nslookup… Nothing works on several inland cell sites, like the ones near me. (THE ONES THAT HAVE BEEN UPGRADED.) But out on the east coast, it works normally. They don’t seem to know if those have been upgraded or not, for whatever reason.
That it works on some sites and not others really baffled them. Eventually, someone at Telecom guessed that there must be some kind of issue with the old SIM cards not working with the upgraded cell sites. I have one of the old XT SIM cards. Old meaning from last year.
So, how many Telecom XT users with older devices and SIM cards are having this problem on the upgraded cell sites? If Telecom knows, they are keeping this very quiet.
It’ll be hilarious if the new SIM card makes it work again. They’re sending one out to me.
Anyway, I sort of have Vodafone’s mobile broadband thing working here. It’s barely connecting, and there was no option for a modem that can use an external antenna. I’ll be testing it out over the next few days.
We’ll be getting back to our regularly scheduled programming later today and tomorrow.
Apologies for all this nonsense.
—End Update—
Update: It’s Still Down
I’m sitting in my car typing this on Becky’s laptop. The condensed version of the story is that I still have no Internet connection at home. I’ve gone for a bit of a drive and I’m on a different cell site now.
Thanks, Telecom. This is just grand. Oh yeah, why aren’t you showing this outage on your network status page? Hmm? Is it because you have that XT promotion happening right now??? Mmm hmm.
So… Yeah. I’m going to have to unleash the monster on the phone tomorrow. Nobody wants that to happen, especially me, but this is just nuts.
—End Update—
Really fast, while my connection is up:
In the early morning hours yesterday, Telecom NZ “upgraded” the cell site that I use to connect to the mobile broadband service. The thing has been dead ever since.
They confirmed that the site is dead and they’re working on getting it running again.
I don’t know if it’s really working now, or if it’s going to crap out, so… That’s the story from here.
SOP for Telecom.
your service had obviously been exceeding benchmarks and needed to be brought into line.
(sorry, i realize this is really annoying for you, but Telecom are such …, i cannot resist taking the …)
Thanks for the info Kevin.
Your baby two is coming soon, and it is better
to know that this outage is not Becky and baby related downtime.
Sheesh.
I think its kind of wonderful that I am connected to a family on the other side of the world from me. But I am like a worrying chicken.
Sheesh.
God/dess bless.
Good luck Kevin. I’ve been there. I know how it feels to get cut off from something you need to keep up on. Hopefully they’ll get your tower back up soon.
Would a repeater with a directional antenna be a feasible option? I know you don’t have a lot of opportunity to research the options right now, but it may get you ready for next time they screw up.
You can prune the rest of this if you don’t want it posted. The link is just from a quick search, I can’t claim this is a good product, but I know there are good repeaters out there.
http://www.gsm-repeater.com/product_info.php?products_id=39
You may want to use a parabolic antenna instead of the shown Yagi antenna. A parabolic will give you better signal strength and a narrower beamwidth to let you select your tower. Of course, it’ll require you figuring out where the towers are (turn the antenna slowly, and watch for signals, and note the directions)