More problems with mobile phone in Australia

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As reported on page 6
Advertizer Newspaper
Wednesday January 12
(I tried locating URL unsuccessfully so type report out instead)
by Industrial reporter David Eccles
Faulty computer software disrupted much of Telstra's South Australian network for three hours yesterday.
The problem meant no STD calls could be made from SA and no STD calls from Victoria and New South Wales got through to SA.
"snip"<> "At one stage pretty much most people in South Australia wouldn't have been able to make an STD call, and maybe a local call as well, so it probably affected the entire State," a Telstra spokes-woman said.
"snip"
The breakdown occurred during a software upgrade at Flinders and Waymouth Streets exchanges.
Although the cause of the fault was not yet known, it was 'definitely' not related to the Y2K bug.
"We can rule that right out," the spokes-woman said. "It was data- related problem in our trunk switches: we were carrying out a data upgrade and, unknown to us, our data was faulty.
"We had to physically remove the fault data before we could restore services."
"snip"
State government departments reported difficulty contacting regional areas.
A Commonwealth Bank spokesman said no ATMs were affected but there had been trouble with incoming and outgoing calls. However there had been little impact on customers, he said.
End of Article.
Other annoying things are happening Down Under and if I can find correct URLs and confirmed reports I'll take the time to post them.
I lurked this forum for over a year and often get worthwhile infomation. There's a certain Monty Pythonesque surreal quality about living in South Australia and lurking your forum. I frequently get the dreaded giggles. Is it contagious?
Regards from SA where we are having a heatwave!!! It's Hot!!

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), January 12, 2000.

Hi Pieter, Thanks for the info...I checked the links above. They seem to be working OK...keep us all posted about how things are going down under!!!

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 12, 2000.

OT : Just out of interest , how many other Ausies are about on here ? (I am in Far-North Queensland , Australia).

-- XOR (drwizzard@usa.net), January 12, 2000.

Sydney, Australia! ;)

-- Leo Champion (lchampion@dingoblue.net.au), January 12, 2000.

Thank you Carl for your interest in Australian affairs. The Adelaide Advertiser Newspaper URL is found via www.news.com.au
My interest in Y2K stems from a personal stake in a server's survival and also as a cynic. If you get radiated in the Northern Hemisphere I reckon I am distant enough. Any further away for me means Antarctica or Adelaide. Both places chill.
I'm afraid I have a peculiar planetary view from the edge of the world to which I'm attached via a thin frail copper wire. If we fray on the edge you mob in the throng centers will hurt.
For example, just up the road is a Kimberly-Clark paper tissue factory that employs a rural town. This region is the bible belt of Australia with a huge fundamentalist focus along American lines and is archconservative. According to church social group gossip the factory tested its equipment by rolling clocks ahead and it was a showstopper. Total failure. This happened early on and remediation must have worked well because no failures are being talked about. Lots of people GI'd and if problems do happen less toilet paper will be exported.
Twice before Christmas '99 South Australia had total power outage. I was personally affected by having to resurrect my brother's box because the brownouts fried his brand new hard drive. At the server the UPS squealed a lot over some days then. It does so often being hyper sensitive to power oscillation. Involvement with people in the Civic Emergency Service brings confidential information that the substation at Bordertown had a computer glitch related to Y2K testing. Authorities will have you believe otherwise, but lots of boxes and hard drives went to heaven that day.
The authorities will tell that nothing is faulting with the rollover in the entire State of South Australia. This in itself is just astonishingly good news, although there appears to be a news smothering on. The Telstra failure could not be hidden though because it was Statewide. At lunch I bailed up my mate the Telstra linesman who said it was a software patch gone wrong. The bibble-babble confused me when he talked so I can give no joy to techno freaks trying to glean more detailed analysis. We did notice the failure though and thus it was reported in the local rag. A URL I found was zapped when I checked again. Strange. Maybe it wasn't there to begin with.
Another successfully hidden failure was the PowerStation on Kangaroo Island that had spat the dummy right on rollover. Nobody really noticed because you go to Kangaroo Island to not notice such things. It's difficult to appreciate the desolation unless you are actually there and suitably hazy on wacky tobaccy. The contingency plan diesel generators are dinging the island experience.
Last August I attended the first Y2K business meeting convened by the Minister of such things. Besides the Further Education lecturers and staff our city business people were conspicuous by their absence. The regional organizer on behalf of the Minister said in December that he had found it difficult to get anyone to attend them.
You see, the thing that matters here is water, or rather the lack of water. Y2K simply does not register as highly as the access to aquifer water and the Murray River. South Australia is the driest State of the driest continent on earth. Only 1.4 million people live here, mostly in Adelaide and its suburbs, of which one had all its traffic lights fail yesterday, a glitch. Water is failing us big time with salt damage claiming a football field every hour. It's a big place but we might not be able to grow produce to feed the world as well as we had thought. To put it bluntly we are stressing our ecosystem.
Our fabulously opinioned politicians just awarded themselves a 10% wage rise and rewarded us with a Good and Services Tax, an Emergency Services Levy and so on. The water infrastructure is wobbly, roads are potholing and the rural migration to the cities in the East coast is on in earnest. The lads are dousing a local scrub fire and several other big bush fires rage further away. We've got a heat wave and batch failings of all kinds. Who needs Y2K and computers when there are deliberately lit fires to fight.
And then I read in the Advertiser today; "A Federal Government department has spent more than $4.5 million dollars to fix a computer system that cost $3 million to install. The system has 'sent' staff on leave without their knowledge and wiped out crucial records." They are auditing this department manually right now.
As you Americans say so well; 'Go Figure!'
Regards from Down Under's Deep South.
Business begins the new year next week. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode...:)

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), January 13, 2000.

http://news.com.au/news_content/state_content/4361553.htm
This link continues the Avgas Mobil fiasco. It's impacting on rural Australia airservices. Think fire spotter planes, fire fighting planes, helicopters for rescue etc. You get the picture.
This threat is about digital telephones in Australia. For two weeks since their full introduction farmers and rural Australia has complained about lack of quality. Yesterday Telstra announced a continuation of analogue services until further notice. Some people are less than impressed.
Did you want to know that a major supermarket chain is using staff home computers to do daily orders because their stores have been hurt badly by virus attack activated on roll-over? This info is first hand from the person who is bringing things back to normal, whatever that is. This superstore's data is using the 19100 field entry until things are sorted out. My friend doesn't want to know either.
Regards from Oz

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), January 13, 2000.

Pieter , About that Avgas thing , not only what you mentioned but pretty much EVERYTHING in rural Australia now relies on light aircraft. Could you tell me which supermarket chain this is? If you don't/can't post it here, my email is a real address.

-- XOR (drwizzard@usa.net), January 14, 2000.

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