Telstra had a REALLY bad time last week

Hi, it is funny how you added an imaginary second E into Telstra

Ex Telstra employee here and long term Jeff fan You will be amazed how much ancient stuff runs the infrastructure there because it's "to complicated to replace" PS it's pronounced "Tel Stra" ie the Tel in telecom and the "Stra" in "au-stra-lia"

2026 not 2016!

There is only one e in Telstra, Jeeff.

The real issue with Telstra is they live off an image of "the best" and charge accordingly. They were government owned until the 1990s, then privatised and were handed the entirety of all fixed line infrastructure on a platter and abused that position for decades. It's why it took so long for fibre internet to get legs here; it required a government entity (the NBN) to overcome it. And this - THIS - is the result of all that. The business is stuffed with people working 10am to 3pm while spending their time in the office running their own business on the side. They will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment which then gets left in a corridor in box until someone gets sick of it and then throws it out. It is a large, bloated, slow-moving behemoth that can do what it wants because its profits are locked in. I hate their guts.

Jeff is procastinating preparing for opensuace by giving us two videos today.

Wasn't expecting you to cover this, but seeing it's time related, that makes sense 😂 glad to learn more about the outages! Edit: also Telstra won't have lost any trust over this...they didn't have any in the first place.

Telstra is an example of privatisation at its worst. When it was a Government-owned organisation, Telstra had a reputation for world-class engineering. Since being privatised, everything has been pared back to minimal safety barriers at every point, it's all about chasing dollars and shareholder returns. Telstra still trades off its old reputation, but it hasn't deserved or earned that reputation for over 20 years now. Very sad.

tel-stra. two syllables. Great vid. thank you.

Australian telecommunications is a mess

Hi Jeff, telco engineer here working for a power utility in Australia. In our company we have a pretty expansive clocking network to support our TDM network (yep still using multiplexers!). We have a saying in the team, clocking is reliable until it isn’t… it’s always clocking! In critical infrastructure it tends to be a different mindset, we probably wouldn’t trust a cheaper clock as they usually don’t come with support and warranty contracts like the more expensive gear does. We’ve got some pretty cool new clocking equipment coming in that I’m excited for because of your videos!

2:50 I agree! "We are so dependent on a good time nowadays..."

Telstra tech executive here. MASSIVE fines and compensation on its way to the customers, government, all the passengers, almost everyone. To be funded by all the customers. 😵‍💫💰💰💰

We specified 1x GPSr and 1x MSF / DCF77 radio NTP servers. The data centre team hated me for the cabling to be the roof, but NTP always worked.

Hey look at the FPGA running that thing. Also, as someone that works in telecom, swapping a clock out is no small feat. Depending on what is downstream of where it is, it can be a huge impact. Best case scenario you are looking at everything downstream offline for 5 or so minutes. The amount of outdated equipment in telecom is outrageous due to having to have 5 9’s of reliability (uptime of 99.999%). Generally speaking things are only taken offline for failure or critical updates. Just bandaid it otherwise

Aussie here. People are always shocked when there is an outage. But the reasons being like this always cement my opinion. These outages should be happening more 😂😮

When looking up at the sky and making a guess, is vastly more accurate than a computer.....

Thanks for the video on Telstra, Jefefe!

I'm a former Metrologist for Lockheed and used to calibrate those at the Stennis Space Center lab in Mississippi, nearly 20 years ago.

So glad I wasn't the only one who thought of you when this happened...