Re: East Coast Earthquake 8-23-2011 - comment and a bit of a Christchurch Telco report :)
On 25/08/2011 9:58 p.m., Mark Foster wrote: This is a cynical approach to what happened, in my (Auckland based) opinion. In the early stages information would've been relatively hard to come by, responders were very much in an all-hands-to-the-pump running-on-instinct phase and the scale of the incident means that regional and national emergency response needed to be spun up. As resources arrived from outside the immediately affected area, information began to be handled in a more structured fashion and the picture became clearer. Yes. I understand this. I wonder if I didn't word my thoughts very well? :) I don't know much about how radio is run. I recall thinking at the time "I wish they'd tone down the hype... this is VERY real". It was my observation that the radio hype toned down later in the day. I think you're right that the reason was they had more concrete information to talk about. Reflecting on it later, I wondered if they have a disaster policy? I wondered if they really understood the impact they were having on people. Perhaps my views are cynical. I know I turned to the radio for a sense of comfort that afternoon. A feeling of being 'informed' while I shovelled barrow loads of silt away, that rose up under my home, was important to me. The broadcasters are human. Totally. The Christchurch quake is the single biggest event of our generation (in NZ) and most of the broadcasters had never seen anything that big or signficant. The human cost hits home. Ithink it's cynical to think of 'money shot' type approaches... whilst every journo and cameraman wants good footage, you make them sound more callous than I expect they were. Sorry, that was not my intention at all. My impression is that these people were proud to do the job as best they could. To me, a 'money shot' isn't just about how much they can push the ratings, it's also about doing your job well to tell the story. News guys are passionate about what they do. But they are human, and I think we lost sight of that at one point in the weeks that followed as one of our best started to crack. I recall earlier in the year we had another disaster down here, a mine exploded. It was a media feeding frenzie. But that's what it was, a frenzie, none of the media were in any danger of getting hurt. But this was very different. The media were in harms way. Frankly their professional level was amazing to watch. While I did loose text messaging, I never lost my telephone service or email connection. My phone service is on VoIP. I have a client on my mobile phone. So my service just transferred to my mobile even though my home lost power. When the mobile data 3G net failed, I then flicked to 2G GPRS data, then when that failed my power was back and we returned to the HFC cable. This isnt necessarily a success story. All of the above has a heavy dependency on mains power. You're probably lucky that you retained sufficient battery endurance for the time you had no mains power. Yet another observation; the trend toward Smartphones is also a trend toward devices that you're lucky to get 2 days of standby on, in comparison to older, more basic handsets that might give you a week between charges. Yes. I now have an inverter permanently in my car so we can charge phones. Another risk. I see VOIP as more risky than copper POTS due to the inability to rely on the service 'just working'. Where the exchange - a decent facility with significant investment in redundant power - can backfill power needs for an extended period back along the copper pair, this has got to be better than the average VOIP user who probably has no redundant power option at all. The corded-phone harvest would be no good for anyone who was fully on VOIP... even those end-nodes that have gel-cell batteries fitted for service during a power-failure would only be good for a few hours at best. How many residential properties have a Generator available? A growing number of homes have generators now as a result the the quake. A number of my friends have generators now as well. We are moving to an IP world, like it or not. That's how I see it anyway. I like POTS, it's simple and will run over just about anything, but it's expensive and my experience showed that it can't be relied on as well as my VoIP. +64 3 348 7235 - It just rings. My neighbour on the incumbent lost his service for 3 days when the sewer guys damaged the lines and the telco simply wasn't able to get service to him because they couldn't figure out what was wrong. My other neighbour lost his pstn, and I suspect it was because of issues in the city exchange that controls all the nodes. But what ever caused it, it was down for days with no way to get calls moved in a cost effective way. Wireless, especially on unlicensed spectrum, has nowhere near the SLA that a typical fibre (or even copper business-grade)
Re: East Coast Earthquake 8-23-2011 - comment and a bit of a Christchurch Telco report :)
On Thu, 25 Aug 2011, Mark Foster wrote: Radio - That was very interesting to observe. Clearly radio stations don't have disaster broadcast plans in place for content. When you're crying out for information about what's going on, the very last think you want to hear is an inappropriate advert break. The number of stations that kept broadcasting adverts for 'exciting things in Christchurch' was un-nerving. It's my view that media news desks also need to remember to listeners who are in the middle of the disaster area and are hanging on every word of their 'emergency radio'. To hear that my city is 'devastated by a MASSIVE earth quake and hundreds of people have been killed' every 10 minutes in the 'over hyped' news reader voice gets very alarming. Commercial, nationwide-broadcast radio stations are not going to (by their very nature) broadcast disaster-information on a continuous basis as a significant proportion of their listener base may not be directly affected, and dont necessarily need the trauma. There's a psychological hit in this, and value in keeping up the norm as much as is reasonable. On the other hand I expect that Radio New Zealand was one of the better transmitters involved, and to a lesser degree any radio station whos focus is talkback is going to be better value than someone who plays pop music. I neglected to mention that Radio NZ's IP data volume exploded during and in the immediate aftermath of the Christchurch quake, and a substantial amount of the load was international - friends and family, and folks out of town, wanting to check up on the situation and unable to receive local TV or FM broadcasts. If you host a broadcaster on your network, be warned (For little ol' NZ, International Bandwidth is the expensive bit...) Mark.
Re: East Coast Earthquake 8-23-2011 - comment and a bit of a Christchurch Telco report :)
Radio - That was very interesting to observe. Clearly radio stations don't have disaster broadcast plans in place for content. When you're crying out for information about what's going on, the very last think you want to hear is an inappropriate advert break. The number of stations that kept broadcasting adverts for 'exciting things in Christchurch' was un-nerving. It's my view that media news desks also need to remember to listeners who are in the middle of the disaster area and are hanging on every word of their 'emergency radio'. To hear that my city is 'devastated by a MASSIVE earth quake and hundreds of people have been killed' every 10 minutes in the 'over hyped' news reader voice gets very alarming. Commercial, nationwide-broadcast radio stations are not going to (by their very nature) broadcast disaster-information on a continuous basis as a significant proportion of their listener base may not be directly affected, and dont necessarily need the trauma. There's a psychological hit in this, and value in keeping up the norm as much as is reasonable. On the other hand I expect that Radio New Zealand was one of the better transmitters involved, and to a lesser degree any radio station whos focus is talkback is going to be better value than someone who plays pop music. It was interesting to observe later in the day the whole tone of broadcast changed. It seemed the media started to realise that this was in fact a very serious disaster and not just something they could/should beat up for ratings and ad revenues. Many stations are now all broadcast out of Auckland (over 1000km away and completely unaffected by the quake) This is a cynical approach to what happened, in my (Auckland based) opinion. In the early stages information would've been relatively hard to come by, responders were very much in an all-hands-to-the-pump running-on-instinct phase and the scale of the incident means that regional and national emergency response needed to be spun up. As resources arrived from outside the immediately affected area, information began to be handled in a more structured fashion and the picture became clearer. I watched the live coverage as much as I was able from the office when the quake struck, but the truth is that it was a few hours before solid data (that didnt mean repeating the same several datapoints) was forthcoming in any major volume. We have had one new local radio station establish as a result of the quake. A group further down the country brought a caravan of equipment and set up a temporary transmitter in the most impacted part of the city. The result was so successful that the station has stayed on air. This is a success story in my opinion; I imagine it'll have value during the recovery phase but I expect it'll remain relatively small, assuming theres any intention to continue with it long term. Local radio stations seem to be going the way of local-anything; being superceded by larger organisations that can benefit from scale. The ISP world is no different. filtered. Clearly some very careful consideration was given in the TV broadcast space. Emergency Services and the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management have dedicated media liason for exactly this reason, and clued-up mainstream media are not stupid. Im more impressed that there wasn't more carnage published on Youtube, etc, from joe-insensitive-camcorder. Impact on the media did become evident over the following two weeks. One broadcaster simply lost the plot at one point. It became evident that media presenters were becoming more effected by the disaster as time went on. I can understand this. Being told "Hey, stand there... because it will be a 'money shot'" takes some real guts when you consider that 'there' is in front of a building that could fall on you in the next aftershock. The broadcasters are human. The Christchurch quake is the single biggest event of our generation (in NZ) and most of the broadcasters had never seen anything that big or signficant. The human cost hits home. Ithink it's cynical to think of 'money shot' type approaches... whilst every journo and cameraman wants good footage, you make them sound more callous than I expect they were. IPTV. Moving into an IPTV world is going to be very interesting in the disaster space in my view. We currently have FTA DVB-T & S and still have analogue transmission. So a 12volt inverter in your car and you can keep watching media. But what's going to happen in an IPTV world where most of the heavy data lifting is done via fibre? I personally feel that low-complexity analogue systems work well as the lowest common denominator, and despite the fact i'm an IP engineer I harbour some concerns about the movement away from basic, tried-and-true technologies that involve substantially fewer OSI layers. However, TV in NZ will be pure digital in the next year or tw
Re: East Coast Earthquake 8-23-2011 - comment and a bit of a Christchurch Telco report :)
On 25/08/2011 12:18 p.m., Michael Painter wrote: So the "old corded phones" were to be distributed to those who have copper/POTS service? I assume so. I honestly don't know where the phones went exactly. Most people still have a copper pots service here (though that is changing). Kinda' off-topic, but what was the situation like regarding radio/television coverage during the event? First, I wouldn't consider that off topic given where our media and internet is heading... :) Radio - That was very interesting to observe. Clearly radio stations don't have disaster broadcast plans in place for content. When you're crying out for information about what's going on, the very last think you want to hear is an inappropriate advert break. The number of stations that kept broadcasting adverts for 'exciting things in Christchurch' was un-nerving. It's my view that media news desks also need to remember to listeners who are in the middle of the disaster area and are hanging on every word of their 'emergency radio'. To hear that my city is 'devastated by a MASSIVE earth quake and hundreds of people have been killed' every 10 minutes in the 'over hyped' news reader voice gets very alarming. It was interesting to observe later in the day the whole tone of broadcast changed. It seemed the media started to realise that this was in fact a very serious disaster and not just something they could/should beat up for ratings and ad revenues. Many stations are now all broadcast out of Auckland (over 1000km away and completely unaffected by the quake) We were told by health staff to stop watching and listen to the media because of the potential PTSD impact. The radio stations did mostly consolidate down to two main transmissions. One local station was interesting to listen to as the announcer almost refused to leave the building, stayed on air and continued to take phone calls. We have had one new local radio station establish as a result of the quake. A group further down the country brought a caravan of equipment and set up a temporary transmitter in the most impacted part of the city. The result was so successful that the station has stayed on air. TV coverage was amazing. Not only did we never loose TV (though that's not much of a surprise as Christchurch is a flat plane at the foot of a big hill, so there's 1 transmitter for the whole area), but the coverage was very clearly edited. While people in the .us saw shots of cars with dead bodies, we didn't see any dead people that I can recall and content was very filtered. Clearly some very careful consideration was given in the TV broadcast space. Having said that, the presentation was still disturbing and running almost 18 hours a day for a while, you have to turn off the TV. But what was really the most interesting was www.press.co.nz. For weeks it streamed a constant source of information that was far more up to date that any other news source. The Press is the local news paper. What is amazing is that their building was destroyed and staff were even killed. Their ability to keep news flowing on to their web site was just something else. In my house the Press web site was our main source of information and it was updated with a full range of stories faster than other media sites. Impact on the media did become evident over the following two weeks. One broadcaster simply lost the plot at one point. It became evident that media presenters were becoming more effected by the disaster as time went on. I can understand this. Being told "Hey, stand there... because it will be a 'money shot'" takes some real guts when you consider that 'there' is in front of a building that could fall on you in the next aftershock. IPTV. Moving into an IPTV world is going to be very interesting in the disaster space in my view. We currently have FTA DVB-T & S and still have analogue transmission. So a 12volt inverter in your car and you can keep watching media. But what's going to happen in an IPTV world where most of the heavy data lifting is done via fibre? Like many places around the world, consumers here are looking for 'more, faster, cheaper'. Regulators are wanting 'more competitors'. 50 years ago we had 1 provider with 1 TV channel. Today I have lost count of the layer 1 providers in my area. IP is our Future... In my mind, IP is very clearly our future disaster proof technology if it's used properly, or a disaster in it self if it's used incorrectly. While I did loose text messaging, I never lost my telephone service or email connection. My phone service is on VoIP. I have a client on my mobile phone. So my service just transferred to my mobile even though my home lost power. When the mobile data 3G net failed, I then flicked to 2G GPRS data, then when that failed my power was back and we returned to the HFC cable. WIRELESS IS FASTER. One thing I will note is th
Re: East Coast Earthquake 8-23-2011 - comment and a bit of a Christchurch Telco report :)
Don Gould wrote: Many many people use cordless phones and don't have a non-powered/corded phone any more. After the 22nd we had a national campaign to get old corded phones to Christchurch. 5,000 were collected. (Now when you consider the country has a population of 4m and Christchurch has ~360k, 5,000 phones is quite a few). So the "old corded phones" were to be distributed to those who have copper/POTS service? Kinda' off-topic, but what was the situation like regarding radio/television coverage during the event? --Michael
Re: East Coast Earthquake 8-23-2011 - comment and a bit of a Christchurch Telco report :)
On 25/08/2011 12:27 a.m., Scott Morris wrote: Also, the quake on the east coast was much closer to the surface than most west coast quakes, which could account for the feeling. Scott (not a geologist) /me is also not a geologist, but does live in the east part of Christchurch, New Zealand. Our CBD has been closed for 6 months now as a result of a 6.3 on February 22, 2011. A number of factors effect impact on buildings from our experience. Depth is a big issue. A quake 80km deep at 5.8 will have far less impact than one 1km deep. When I read yours was 1km deep, I started looking for the impact stories. Direction of the movement is also a big issue. In our case the ground was going up and down under our tall(ish) buildings faster than the buildings. The ground would start coming up again before the building had finished coming down again from the last movement cycle. This just smashes buildings to bits. Our tallest building is 26 stories, will take a year to bring down and is on a lean. Interesting most of the damage was caused by the building next to it being hammered into the side. We have many ~10 story buildings to come down. Anyway enough about buildings... here's some comment on networks that I thought some might find interesting... Networks - Mobile Mobile traffic does go nuts. We have an average (iirc) of less than 30 minutes voice traffic per month per user. So out networks simply are not designed with a large load in mind. We also don't have the 'confirmation' aspect of the sms (texting) protocol turned on. This means that the senders mobile phone doesn't know if the message has been delivered to the receiver. In our case, we have 3 mobile networks in Christchurch. We discovered that we simply didn't have enough inter carrier capacity provisioned for sms traffic. While users could send messages 'same network to same network', they couldn't send them 'off network'. We also have full number portability. This means that senders don't know which network they're even sending messages to any more. +64 021 - Vodafone +64 022 - 2Degrees +64 027 - Telecom Fail - not any more. The up shot is that when disaster struck us, text/sms messages were not getting though and now one knew what the problem was. So people started to attempt phone calls (on a network provisioned for an average load of ~30 minutes a month - you can see how this is heading down hill fast!). The really ironic part of the lack of inter-carrier capacity for sms was that the 3G data capacity never failed for me. So while I couldn't send a 200byte message, I could send a 300kbyte email with photos. !!!POWER!!! Battery life also quickly becomes a problem for both network operator and user. As towers start shutting down, phones move to more distant towers, which mean everything uses more power. Telco's are then presented with the problem of getting generators to towers. "Remember your chains and padlocks!" - when disaster strikes, idiots think stealing telco generators is cool. You don't want to have to revisit a tower just to replace the generator. Home users quickly realise they have no way to recharge their mobiles. New, cheap, smart phones only last a day and even less when they're trying to talk to distant towers. (You should see the pile of hand held 'crank' torch/radio/mobile phone chargers that our local hardware store now has!) People are also asking about inverters on local message boards. Population Movement... Another problem we've found is that population movement causes load issues. Thousands of people left the city area to towns up to 3 hours away to escape the aftershocks. They take their phones and mobile broadband and then spent lots of time calling back into the city to local friends and family. Suddenly everyone's doing much more calling from small towns back into the city over the mobile network than normal. Networks - Fixed Our fixed lined networks did stay up reasonably well. (We have two separate copper networks in 50% of the city - Telecom & TelstraClear, and one incumbent who covers the whole city - Telecom.) However, the power went out (in many cases simply because the street side transformers have sensors in them to detect if the oil reservoir has moved. The earth quakes trip the sensors and they either go out for a while or you have to wait until someone comes and resets them I think - either way, it resulted in 9 hours with no power for me on the 22nd). Many many people use cordless phones and don't have a non-powered/corded phone any more. After the 22nd we had a national campaign to get old corded phones to Christchurch. 5,000 were collected. (Now when you consider the country has a population of 4m and Christchurch has ~360k, 5,000 phones is quite a few). We are moving forward into an FTTN/H world. This means that homes need power to keep voip units up. Simple rule - when disaster
