Dan Warne08 December 2008, 8:21 PM
Telstra execs may have been rubbing their hands in glee at Optus' 3G misfortunes, but now its own Next G network has been hit by a software glitch.
APC reader Paul Heymans (of
Paul Computers) tipped us to the problem affecting the Telstra Next G network in Queensland.
"There seem to be some problems with the Next G Broadband network that no-one in Telstra is willing to own up to," he said, pointing us to a
lengthy discussion thread at Whirlpool.
The user who started the thread, m121180, said he was getting Next G dropouts every few minutes, often couldn't connect at all, extremely slow speeds such as seven minutes to load a BigPond tech support page, and latency of up to seven seconds per packet.
Above: Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo -- is there a glitch in the Next G matrix?Telstra tech support staff first blamed the problem on storms, then on Windows Vista, and then a third person acknowledged there was a problem on their end but didn't call the user back.
Dozens of other people then chimed in to say they were having similar problems.
"I've gone down to sub dial up speeds and regular disconnects (signal strength
is still full)," wrote Rodders83. "I too rely on NextG to run a business, and because of the problems everyone seems to be having I can't make a living."
Following APC's enquiries, Telstra has admitted there was a fault on its network.
"As a consequence of a planned software upgrade to the Next G network, an unexpected fault adversely impacted data speeds at a small number of locations in Queensland last week," said Telstra spokesman Peter Taylor.
"A correction was applied progressively into the network at the affected areas last week and there remain no known performance issues in the region."
"Telstra's established monitoring and performance management promptly identified and isolated this matter," he said.
Not promptly enough, evidently, with users still complaining of performance problems as of this evening.