Labour alleges failure of Southern Cross Cable

Southern Cross Cable claims Clare Curran's description of outage as 'catastrophic failure' is misleading and inaccurate

Comments

Southern Cross Cable suffered a “catastrophic failure” this morning, says Labour ICT spokesperson Clare Curran.

This has been denied by the company, which has labelled her description of the outage as "misleading and inaccurate". “Labour has learnt that a ‘catastrophic failure’ at Southern Cross’s Alexandria landing station occurred this morning due to an unauthorised and un-notified software change to their wavelength switching platform, which blew up,” she said in a media statement “We understand that partial service has been restored by reinstating old circuits via New Zealand. Full restoration is still being worked on.” Curran has susquently posted the source of her information online. It shows two email conversations about the outage, which one correspondent describes as "a catastrophic failure at the Alexandria landing station this morning." The company named as being affected is Vocus. Meanwhile Southern Cross Cable issued a statement about the outage.

"Contrary to a misleading and inaccurate media release from Labour’s Clare Curran, no ‘catastrophic failure’ has occurred on the Southern Cross Cable.

"The cable is, a figure of 8 network providing internet services to New Zealand, Australia, Pacific and the US.

"In the early hours of this morning a limited outage affecting 10 percent of our active capacity occurred during our maintenance window which is a low traffic impacting period.

"The outage occurred at one of our Sydney cable stations, Alexandria, and it lasted from 3.17am – 4.28am, Sydney Time, impacting four of our customers.

"A problem occurred and the switch was reverted to its original software. The incident occurred as a part of authorised work taking place to expand capacity on the Southern Cross network."

The Cable