Australia’s Telstra and vendor partners Ericsson, Cisco and Juniper have assembled a team of engineering experts to conduct an end-to-end review of its network after the company experienced three mobile network outages in two months.
During a recent speech at the CommsDay summit, Telstra Operations COO Kate McKenzie said the company has already implemented changes based on reviews of the network to increase the capacity and path diversity of critical signaling channels.
The company also plans to shortly augment the capacity of the HLR front end that managers customers’ subscription data.
While the review is underway, Telstra Operations is working under a heightened awareness plan including requiring executive-level review of any changes planned for the mobile and core IP networks.
“Our network is resilient and we are determined to get the best advice from around the world to help ensure that it stays that way. Our focus is on ensuring our network is the best available and rebuilding our customers’ trust by meeting their expectations every day,” McKenzie said.
Telstra has offered its customers two separate free data days as compensation for the outages, including one last Sunday. McKenzie revealed that its mobile customers consumed 2.68Tb of data by the end of the day, three times the amount downloaded on a normal weekday and 46% downloaded during the last free data day in February.