Optus blames Nokia software patches

FLAWED software patches from Nokia Siemens Networks have crippled Optus's 3G mobile network in Brisbane.
Optus subscribers in the city had intermittent interruptions of transmission of data and voice services from 6am yesterday, as the No2 telco battled to reconfigure a recent upgrade to its new 3G software platform.
The upgrade, to all Optus 3G mobile switches nationwide, was supposed to provide efficiency gains in speed and capacity. Instead, it triggered three network failures that combined to cause chaos for Optus customers in Queensland, NSW, ACT and Victoria last week.
Subscribers were without mobile phone services for 10 hours.
While the upgrade was successfully rolled back in Melbourne and Sydney, the problem recurred in Brisbane.
"We had a new patch put in place in the affected areas by midday last Friday but we now have a re-emergence of a similar problem in the Brisbane area," Optus spokesman Maha Krishnapillai said. He said Optus could offer no guarantees that the problem would not recur as it was related to a Nokia Siemens software fault.
"Nokia's latest version of the software was in effect 'contaminated'," he said. "We had a bug in the software so we have had to roll it back. The issue for us is that we have put the upgrade in other areas and have had no problems whatsoever -- so it's a bit of a lottery."
Engineers from Optus and Nokia Siemens were both responsible for the patch installation. Optus was unsure why the patch had worked in some areas but not others.
"There was extensive testing on both our parts and we were also assured by Nokia Siemens that the software would work in different (network) environments," Mr Krishnapillai said. "But when we went live it was a different story.
"Now we're just hoping the patch will hold. We can't say for sure whether or not we will have more issues over the next week in Brisbane."
Nokia Siemens declined to directly address Mr Krishnapillai's claims, saying it valued its close relationship with Optus. Spokesman Ben Roome said: "Experts from both companies are working in partnership to resolve any remaining network issues, as is always the case when any outage occurs."
Meanwhile, Optus has requested network engineers from Nokia Siemens' Finland headquarters to rectify the problem on-site.
"We have told Nokia to fly out some engineers because we certainly won't be flying them here," Mr Krishnapillai said.
He suggested Optus would be reviewing the service level guarantees it had in place with Nokia Siemens.
"We do have some service level guarantees with them and we will clearly be looking at whether the software they have given us is up to scratch," he said.
Mr Krishnapillai ruled out Optus pursuing legal action against Nokia Siemens or seeking compensation. He said: "As I'm sure Nokia would tell you, we are their most important customer in Australia and a very important customer throughout the SingTel group ... they will clearly want to make sure they work with us to fix this problem."