Nine-hour Telecom 'glitch' riles interconnect users

By PETER GRIFFIN

Telecom's interconnect partners are fuming after a network upgrade gone wrong left customers unable to make phone calls while others were billed for calls they did not make.

The country's second-ranked telco TelstraClear, WorldxChange, CallPlus and Compass Communications are counting the cost of a telecoms glitch affecting customers in the 03, 06 and 07 calling zones attempting to make national, international and mobile calls. Telecom's own customers were unaffected.

Several carriers will seek Telecom compensation for business lost during the nine-hour interruption.

TelstraClear's wholesale operations manager, Mike Johnson, said the problem caused thousands of calls to fail. Others were identified incorrectly on the TelstraClear network, and the wrong party billed.

"When a customer makes a call their number is sent through to our network and we use that to identify the caller for billing purposes.

"But the last four digits of those phone numbers were replaced with zeros. It means we didn't recognise the true customer.

"Because so many calls were failing and repeat dialling, it looked like we'd lost the entire [country]."

None of the telcos were warned that possibly disruptive work was being undertaken.

Telecom's general manager of interconnect, Tim Lusk, blamed the outage on contractor NEC, which began a software upgrade just after midnight yesterday to fix a minor problem affecting some international calls. It was finally fixed at 9am.

Lusk was unsure how the glitch affected Telecom's 99.999 per cent network reliability claim.

He said the other telcos were not warned because Telecom thought the upgrade would be a straightforward job. Instead, three major telephone exchanges in Christchurch, Morrinsville and Te Awamutu malfunctioned in passing calls to interconnecting networks.

Lusk said the carriers' chances of winning compensation from Telecom would hinge on their contracts.

"There'll be discussion with the carriers around what impact there was and what [Telecom's] obligations are."

WorldxChange operations manager Paul Clarkin said the company had effectively lost nine hours' business because Telecom's fault had affected TelstraClear, which carried the bulk of WorldxChange traffic.

He said WorldxChange, which has 30,000 customers nationwide, did business with Telecom under a 1998 agreement extended nine times but had outdated terms relating to service levels. It was negotiating new terms with Telecom.

"We ended up billing some customers for Telecom's mistake. We'll have to go through and credit them calls, so yes it will cost us."

Compass Communications chief executive Karim Hussona, said he would look to be compensated for business lost, but feared Telecom's bungle would have a longer lasting impact on the smaller carriers.

"The customers don't care [who was at fault]. As far as they're concerned the calls couldn't get through. We may lose some long-term business as a result," he said.

Wayne Toddun, the chief executive of CallPlus associate Attica Communications, said the lost business was hard to quantify, but CallPlus would look for compensation.

There was no doubt that Telecom's large corporate customers had network issues resolved faster than interconnect partners, he said.

"That was one of the things we put in our submissions to the [Commerce] Commission, to have one level of service for everybody, wholesale partners as well as retail customers."