Natural disasters like bushfires, cyclones and floods can have a disastrous impact on the communities effected by them. The double-whammy is that even after the disaster event, entire regions can be crippled for days or weeks afterwards waiting for infrastructure like comms to be repaired.
I was recently talking with a colleague, Bob, who helped coordinate the Warrnambool exchange rebuild after a fire back in 2012. It took down customer landline, broadband, mobile (41 mobile base-stations) and radio services across swathes of the south-west region of Victoria in Australia. The rebuild effort is famous in telco circles in these parts of the world. I don’t know how long it normally takes to build an exchange, but it’s certainly a lot longer than it took to rebuild this one! A monumental feat by the hundreds of people involved.
When comms is effected so broadly, the knock-on impacts are significant. Every form of communication (other than face-to-face) was down for extended periods. That meant nobody could communicate remotely to organise repair activities. Nobody could use EFTPOS to book hotels, buy food, etc. The region reverted to a cash economy. The related problem was that all forms of electronic funds transfer and ATMs were also inoperable, so getting hold of cash was also impeded.
Cell on Wheels (COWs) were available, but apparently took some time to get up and running… Besides, which operator has 41 COWs ready to assign?
I was reminded of this story upon reading two recent articles, that show we have other tools at our disposal for telco disaster recovery these days:
Naturally, my mind turns to how OSS and BSS can augment and interwork with these solutions. It also reminds of the potential doomsday scenario for OSS builders. Like yesterday’s article, it shows I have such a one-tracked OSS mind! 😀
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Here at Passionate About OSS, we are exactly that – Passionate About OSS (Operational Support Systems). We’re also passionate about BSS, NMS, or any other names you call the tools that help to operationalise your network.
