So for the third time Telstra mobile network has failed. Many tesltra customers rely on Telstra’s wide coverage and feel cheated that the premium they pay for this seems to be as the expense of reliability.

So why is this occurring, despite the cooperate hype Telstra systems are poorly maintained and often antiquated. This is due to managements obsession with cost cutting staff salaries and importing inexperienced young immigrant labor. As a result  a strong disincentive among staff to document systems and procedures resulted. The conclusion was many systems became ‘black boxes’ of unknown function and contents. Of course eventually something will break down and when they do the technician who could maintain them has long since retired (or grudging took a pay out 20 years ago) and had no one to pass the torch to. Worse still many technicians were sacked in the prime of their careers and won’t help Telstra for love or money. As a result we are beginning to see the symptoms of this disease, unreliable infrastructure one might be more familiar with in third world countries, no surprise it is being run by third world people with absolutely no vision past their own KPI’s.

Of course legions of middle managers are happily finding someone to blame, and this is where their love of immigrant labor come in, immigrant are scared to lose their jobs and residency applications so they will take unfair blame along with poor pay and conditions. there’s no real competitor to Telstra for Mobile coverage, so nothing will stop the rot of network stability.

Welcome to the new normal. (You might want to print this out and pass it on, you can’t guarantee internet stability anymore.)