OPTUS Outage

[Gne]

Did the Optus outage have any impact on aviation operation today other than passengers not being able to receive text's about delayed flights?

Asking for a mate.

Gne

[Mr Mossberg]

I know a bunch of millennials that had to communicate by actually speaking to people face to face and having to occasionally look people in the eye and nod occasionally. You could sense the relief was palpable when the network came back online. The room went back to silence, well, apart from the sound of frenzied texting. There was an upkick in counselling appointments made to deal with the half day of trauma.

[Ex FSO GRIFFO]

T I B A 'all around'....or so I heard.

[lucille]

And about those apps which depend on 4G for various bits of “real time” data? Sweaty palms all around.

[Squawk7700]

And about those apps which depend on 4G for various bits of “real time” data? Sweaty palms all around.

Ah yes, the sky would have looked very empty on an EFB using Optus.

+1 for a SkyEcho or similar that would have happily continued to display ADSB-out equipped aircraft.

[PiperCameron]

Ah yes, the sky would have looked very empty on an EFB using Optus.

+1 for a SkyEcho or similar that would have happily continued to display ADSB-out equipped aircraft.

All the more reason to look out of the window, people!

[Pinky the pilot]

Saw some brief TV News footage of some poor Optus Office employee in Adelaide being foully verbally abused by some ignorant bogan who was demanding to be told when the outage would be fixed!!:mad::ugh:

[gerry111]

Imagine if the outage had been on Melbourne Cup Day? The nation that stops the event..

[Pinky the pilot]

The Letters to the Editor of today's Australian Newpaper has a comment from a reader that he heard a Radio Caller to a Talkback station complaining that (because of the Optus outage) "their automatic cat feeder wouldn't work and pussy cat wasn't happy."

The Letter writer went on to say that "Resorting to manually feeding your cat is easy but it does make you wonder how much technology has taken over our lives and this didn't even involve AI."

Further comment escapes me.:rolleyes:

[ER_BN]

Pinky,

I heard the original call….verified.

Peak Human circa 2005…Bring on AI our species is ……hmmmm

I wonder if pussy trauma counselling is available with RSPCA pet insurance?

[morno]

I’m not sure what the drama was, everything was working fine on Telstra….

[thunderbird five]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGXSPf9b-xI

[thunderbird five]

Break out OTTO, the inflatable automatic pilot.

[thunderbird five]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo0KjdDJr1c

[vne165]

Wait until the power goes out for a couple of weeks, as it's surely going to do.
Then you'll hear all about it.

[TWT]

You'll hear all about it when the power comes back on :)

[Ladloy]

Wait until the power goes out for a couple of weeks, as it's surely going to do.
Then you'll hear all about it.
Please, entertain me with this theory.

[megan]

I’m not sure what the drama was, everything was working fine on TelstraYour day is coming morno. ;)

[TWT]

All telcos have outages.

Some are worse than others :)

[Captain Dart]

Wait until the power goes out for a couple of weeks, as it's surely going to do.
Then you'll hear all about it.

Don’t worry, Blackout Bowen has it all under control.

[aroa]

I don’t think the cat cared to much about the lack of auto feed. If hungry probably just hunted up some wildlife from the garden. Nothing like some blood and warm meat to beat that tinned crap they keep putting in the feeder.

[601]

When the oil and coal is left in the ground and there is no long chain hydrocarbons left to make the components of mobiles, the millennials may have to resort to vapp signals, that is if the vapps are made from bamboo.

[compressor stall]

Pinky,

I heard the original call….verified.

Peak Human circa 2005…Bring on AI our species is ……hmmmm

I wonder if pussy trauma counselling is available with RSPCA pet insurance?
I can tell you the caller re said cat feeder on Sydney radio is in her mid 70s.

[601]

I notice one of the main complaints was that "000" calls from mobiles could not be made.
In the years that "000" has been the emergency number, I have called it once.

However, I cannot get any service because my service provider is down I don know that I can call "112" and it will allow my mobile to connect to emergency services using whatever carrier has coverage in my location.
What I don't understand is that every time the complaint "that "000" calls from mobiles could not be made" not one reporter suggested that "112" was an alternate number.
Not only does "112" connect of your provider goes down, it does not need a SIM or a pin to unlock the phone.

112—International standard emergency numberTriple Zero (000) is Australia's primary telephone number to call for assistance in life threatening or time critical emergency situations. Dialling 112 directs you to the same Triple Zero (000) call service and does not give your call priority over Triple Zero (000).

112 is an international standard emergency number which can only be dialled on a digital mobile phone. It is accepted as a secondary international emergency number in some parts of the world, including Australia, and can be dialled in areas of GSM network coverage with the call automatically translated to that country’s emergency number. It does not require a simcard or pin number to make the call, however phone coverage must be available (any carrier) for the call to proceed.

There is no advantage to dialling 112 over Triple Zero (000). Calls to 112 do not go to the head of the queue for emergency services, and it is not true that it is the only number that will work on a mobile phone.

Dialling 112 from a fixed line telephone in Australia (including payphones) will not connect you to the emergency call service as it is only available from digital mobile phones.

[BronteExperimental]

Also the latest iterations of iPhone now have satellite connectivity to emergency services operational over the entire country independent of network availability or status.
Useful addition to PLB/ELT/EPIRBs as well.

[Squawk7700]

Regarding 112, I’m assuming you’d have to remove tour SIM to make it work and if you had an ESIM you’d have to know how to disable it. Might prove challenging in a decent emergency.

A bit like when you’re at home and your wired NBN goes down and your phone is on the wifi bit can’t go anywhere.

I see that they have launched an enquiry to see if 000/112 was actually affected and to what extent.

[The Banjo]

Pinky,

I heard the original call….verified.

Peak Human circa 2005…Bring on AI our species is ……hmmmm

I wonder if pussy trauma counselling is available with RSPCA pet insurance?
Pilots have been counselling hungry pussies free of charge since 1903..

[601]

Regarding 112, I’m assuming you’d have to remove tour SIM to make it work and if you had an ESIM you’d have to know how to disable it.

I don't believe that you need to remove the SIM.

[layman]

It might seem Optus have not learned much from history. This outage seems to 'rhyme' with the 1990 AT&T network crash.

Main points - a one-line software error caused 70 million uncompleted phone calls and 3 airports in the New York area to shut down

We used to use the AT&T crash as a case study in how not to do software testing, system monitoring, risk management, business continuity planning, project management, etc

I can’t recall (or find now) what it cost AT&T, but it wasn’t cheap (even in 1990 dollars)

A long article about the AT&T outage, with a few pieces extracted

https://web.mit.edu/hacker/part1.html
“On January 15, 1990, AT&T's long-distance telephone switching system crashed.
This was a strange, dire, huge event. Sixty thousand people lost their telephone service completely. During the nine long hours of frantic effort that it took to restore service, some seventy million telephone calls went uncompleted.”
…
“the System Crash of January 15, 1990, was caused by an ‘improvement’ in software. Or rather, an ‘attempted’ improvement.”
…
(Aviation content)
“AT&T itself had crippled airports with computer malfunctions -- not just one airport, but three at once, some of the busiest in the world.
Air traffic came to a standstill throughout the Greater New York area, causing more than 500 flights to be cancelled, in a spreading wave all over America and even into Europe. Another 500 or so flights were delayed, affecting, all in all, about 85,000 passengers. (One of these passengers was the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.)”

[Mr Mossberg]

Pilots have been counselling hungry pussies free of charge since 1903..

More likely they have been causing.....

​​​​​​​pussy trauma

[Gne]

Thanks Layman - I have used the AT&T failure many times to underline the need for a robust approach to software changes.

I have spent most of the past 40 years undertaking commissioning and return to operational service tests on aviation systems throughout the world. As the Optus failure unfolded last week I couldn’t help but think, “Have they not understood the past experiences and applied them?” But then I remembered the issues and arguments I have frequently had recently with the “new generation” of engineers and software and network “specialists” and the answer was immediately apparent, as was the thought, “We’ll be seeing much more of this unless they are forced to apply more rigorous procedures and test regimes.”



Hopefully not only Optus but all other software dependent system providers will learn from last week’s experience and more robustly apply measures such as regression testing and failsafe step back steps.



And there are important lessons for the general public, particularly those who rely on external networks for their business and social support: Have some form of non dependent redundancy and demand a service level agreement. The former will give you peace of mind in daily operations and the latter will also give you peace of mind in normal operations and ensure, in the worst case, you have some recourse to compensation.

The fact this thread has not elicited any direct aviation issues from the Optus event hopefully means lessons have been learnt and applied.

​​​​​​​Gne

[CIC]

I'm surprised State Governments and other individual departments are using a Singapore owned company for their communications.
Apart from security risks; what about using the home grown package?
.

[Lookleft]

The fact this thread has not elicited any direct aviation issues from the Optus event hopefully means lessons have been learnt and applied.


Nobody has commented on the irony of seeing Qantas aircraft parked at airbridges with Optus advertising signs at Sydney International? Optus CEO has resigned WIE for the reputational damage that was caused. If only the Qantas Chairman and CEO were held to the same standard.