KEY POINTS:
There's usually at least one technology debacle that inconveniences thousands of customers over the holiday period and this year the dubious honour goes to Vodafone.
As the Herald reported today Vodafone customers roaming to Australia have been unable to make calls and text messages to and from New Zealand for the best part of the last week.
This issue has been bubbling away since the holidays began but not-surprisingly came to a head on New Year's Day when everyone reached for their mobile to call and text their New Year wishes to friends and loved-ones.
Late last week, Vodafone spokesman Paul Brislen told me: "[There's] congestion but nothing's broken. We doubled international capacity again this year but demand always peaks on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve as roamers call home.
"That's also a rolling day as new year arrives in different time zones. The techs are monitoring the situation closely and making what changes they can as the day goes on. Local calls and txt messages shouldn't be affected however. The congestion seems to be on the trans-Tasman links."
Nothing's broken? Try telling that to Kiwi Vodafone customers camped out in Sydney trying to call home! Vodafone has since shifted the blame to Optus, the Australian mobile carrier which Vodafone buys its international capacity from.
"There simply isn't any more international capacity. It's just a matter of waiting until the demand calms down again," Brislen told the Herald today.
What is going on here? There's certainly enough capacity to ensure anyone making a fixed-line call to and from Australia gets through as well as calls form other mobile operators, so why isn't there more capacity for a major mobile player like Vodafone?
Did Vodafone's Aussie boss, the good-natured Kiwi, Russell Hewitt, under-estimate the increase in international mobile traffic and not buy enough capacity from Optus?
Or is there really a serious shortage of capacity on the links between Australia and the rest of the world? What about all this unlit capacity on the Southern Cross Cable linking Australia and New Zealand? Surely Vodafone's big and ugly enough to be able to rent some back-up capacity on that?
The holiday period is of course a high-use period, the volume of calls and messages unmatched during the rest of the year. But surely a mobile operator should be able to add on more capacity as it seems call volumes surging.
If not, then it's taking an educated punt at what it thinks users are going to use its network for and wearing the consequences if it underestimates, as Vodafone is in this instance.
Either way, the business case for those under-sea fibre optic cables being planned for Australia (and possibly New Zealand) is looking better by the day.
