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.

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.

I can tell you the caller re said cat feeder on Sydney radio is in her mid 70s.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Optus copying AT&T outage?
 

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.)”

More likely they have been causing.....

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

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?
.

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.