Breakdown is a Timely Warning
When Technology Fails
2 February, 2013
We have to take our hats off to the Morning Bulletin! Through hell and high water the paper has still reliably kept us up-to-date with news and events, even when phones, email and Internet have been in chaos. All 3 of our own Business grade ADSL connections went dead last Friday at our Musgrave Street sales & service centre as well as all of our mobile phones and mobile Internet sticks (3G & 4G services).
These services only started working again on Monday afternoon – 3 days of lost communications over our Australian Day weekend when so many urgent communications were necessary due to the floods! So how do you throw an entire country into chaos? – Simply finding their main fibre optic cables and use an old fashioned axe would appear to work very effectively! Even simple essentials like being able to buy fuel became difficult when EFTPOS machines were also down.
I only hope this will highlight our National network weaknesses and prompt a review of the ensuing National Broadband Network (NBN) to make sure we have better inherent redundancies in the system!
As we develop technology to make life easier (try telling that to someone that has just got a virus on their PC???) we build systems that become more and more dependent on that technology. Are we really testing the robustness of these systems, or are we openly embracing and accepting these systems without adequate testing?
Future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 49 222 400.
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