[LINK] Thousands of rural internet users affected by national Sky Muster outage

[David Boxall]

Doing well Malcolm. Doing well. >:(
<http://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/4496678/sky-muster-satellites-national-outage/?cs=2452>
> Just hours before the Interim Satellite Service was due to be switched 
> off and decommissioned, its replacement, the Sky Muster Long Term 
> Satellite Service began experiencing a national network outage.
>
> The Better Internet for Rural Regional and Remote Australia Facebook 
> page was broadcasting the news late on Monday afternoon, sharing a 
> notice from Activ8me Customer Care, which said all Sky Muster services 
> were unable to connect to the internet.
>
> “This outage will also affect VoIP services connected via Sky Muster,” 
> it went on to say, noting that while nbn co was working to restore 
> services as quickly as possible, “no ETA is currently known”.
>
> This was followed up with an official notification from nbn co, issued 
> at 6.44pm AEDT, saying the incident was national, affecting all beams.
>
> The next update was due at 8.10pm.
>
> BIRRR founder Kristy Sparrow said it was ironic that the only 
> satellite internet users able to connect to the internet were people 
> who hadn’t migrated across to Sky Muster, touted as a greatly superior 
> service for rural and remote people.
>
> Along with other tongue-in-cheek comments on the BIRRR page made by 
> people still able to access the internet via mobile broadband, Kristy 
> said she hoped the people in charge hadn’t turned off the wrong satellite.
>
> SkyMesh CEO Paul Rees was quoted as saying, “We’re not sure if they 
> mixed Sky Muster up with the Interim Satellite Service which is due to 
> be turned off tomorrow night, but we have asked them to turn Sky 
> Muster back on please”.
>
> On a serious note, Kristy said the loss of internet services for 
> thousands of rural people was exactly why landlines needed to be kept.
>
> She was referring to the Productivity Commission recommendation to 
> remove the mandate for every household to have a telephone landline, 
> which would mean voice services would be delivered via satellite for 
> users in rural and remote Australia.
>
> “It’s not reliable technology,” she said.

-- 
David Boxall                    |  A fool is certain;
                                 |  an ignorant fool,
http://david.boxall.id.au       |  absolutely so.
                                            --Graffito