What's wrong with O2?

[funkyrobot]

Very first world problem this. Just goes to show how some people base their lives on phone use. Wonder how many people were cheesed off jusg because they couldn't access social media.

The Sky news interview with the O2 chap was cringeworthy. Especially the whole compo nonsense.

Never assume something will work properly all of the time.

[Last Visit]

Salmonofdoubt said:

LittleBigPlanet said:

I saw one this morning that made me laugh (paraphrasing as follows):

"My Google Maps doesn't work and I have to drive up north this morning. How am I supposed to get there?!" Dave, London.

I don't know Dave, in fact, before Google Maps everyone just stayed in f-ing doors as far as I remember. How about a f-ing map you specimen!

People who make comments like that make it far easier for us to decide who to save if the world is due to end and escape arks are made.

Very true. As an O2 network user myself (via GG) I found yesterday a most useful exercise in assessing certain elements of society.

Save or not save, some people really help out by making that decision themselves.

[surveyor]

It did make me think.

Most of my work is manged via my phone. My diary is accessed by a CMS app. I would have to find a phone box to get to the office to see where I am meant to be

Then I would have to find it. Not sure if I have any off line map data, and finding a telephone mast in a field in a remote place on a road map would be an interesting excersize.

[alorotom]

What I’d like to know is how many of those claiming lost business, how many are actually on business tariffs as most of these social media whiners are sole traders with no paperwork or formalisation and just masquerading as a “business” are actually normally on personal contracts

[cobra kid]

alorotom said:

What I’d like to know is how many of those claiming lost business, how many are actually on business tariffs as most of these social media whiners are sole traders with no paperwork or formalisation and just masquerading as a “business” are actually normally on personal contracts

Exactly.

I just lost a day of social media as we have wifi at work for internet but there's a watchguard for Facebook, Twitter etc.

I just shrug my shoulders and move on. No big loss.

[thebraketester]

cobra kid said:

Exactly.

I just lost a day of social media as we have wifi at work for internet but there's a watchguard for Facebook, Twitter etc.

I just shrug my shoulders and move on. No big loss.

It’s no big loss to you but the fact is that people have lost out on work/money due to this.

Data wasn’t a huge issue for me but it was the fact that the voice system crashed too that cost me as I wasn’t contactable for about 2 hours.

Did it cost me money? Yes.

Do I think I desverve compo? No.

[mfmman]

surveyor said:

It did make me think.

Most of my work is manged via my phone. My diary is accessed by a CMS app. I would have to find a phone box to get to the office to see where I am meant to be

Then I would have to find it. Not sure if I have any off line map data, and finding a telephone mast in a field in a remote place on a road map would be an interesting exercise.

Mid nineties I did some contract work for Vodaphone. Directions to the masts were issued hard copy (although not using that phrase ) as a series of directions.

'Leave Keynsham in the direction of Bath on the A4. In the village of Saltford, Pass the Red Lion pub and take Smyth Road 50m after it. Look for the phone box then go though the gate opposite it and take the farm track for 800m through the wood to the compound. look out for the dog (yes really ).

I guess you could have these for BCP as a PDF on your phone.

[Shnozz]

thebraketester said:

It’s no big loss to you but the fact is that people have lost out on work/money due to this.

Data wasn’t a huge issue for me but it was the fact that the voice system crashed too that cost me as I wasn’t contactable for about 2 hours.

Did it cost me money? Yes.

Do I think I desverve compo? No.

Indeed. I lost several pieces of work the value of which might have been £200 or £20,000. I will never know.

What I do know is that you realise just how reliant you are on a mobile connection. I almost felt vulnerable without one!

[Robertj21a]

mfmman said:

surveyor said:

It did make me think.

Most of my work is manged via my phone. My diary is accessed by a CMS app. I would have to find a phone box to get to the office to see where I am meant to be

Then I would have to find it. Not sure if I have any off line map data, and finding a telephone mast in a field in a remote place on a road map would be an interesting exercise.

Mid nineties I did some contract work for Vodaphone. Directions to the masts were issued hard copy (although not using that phrase ) as a series of directions.

'Leave Keynsham in the direction of Bath on the A4. In the village of Saltford, Pass the Red Lion pub and take Smyth Road 50m after it. Look for the phone box then go though the gate opposite it and take the farm track for 800m through the wood to the compound. look out for the dog (yes really ).

I guess you could have these for BCP as a PDF on your phone.

I still keep a detailed road map in the car, for general use - and just this sort of situation.

[sjg]

It's testament to how reliable mobile data is these days that so many people rely on it with no backup.

Anyway, seems it's all down to an expired certificate: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/06/ericsson_...

[BrabusMog]

Robertj21a said:

mfmman said:

surveyor said:

It did make me think.

Most of my work is manged via my phone. My diary is accessed by a CMS app. I would have to find a phone box to get to the office to see where I am meant to be

Then I would have to find it. Not sure if I have any off line map data, and finding a telephone mast in a field in a remote place on a road map would be an interesting exercise.

Mid nineties I did some contract work for Vodaphone. Directions to the masts were issued hard copy (although not using that phrase ) as a series of directions.

'Leave Keynsham in the direction of Bath on the A4. In the village of Saltford, Pass the Red Lion pub and take Smyth Road 50m after it. Look for the phone box then go though the gate opposite it and take the farm track for 800m through the wood to the compound. look out for the dog (yes really ).

I guess you could have these for BCP as a PDF on your phone.

I still keep a detailed road map in the car, for general use - and just this sort of situation.

A friend of mine does maintenance on windmills and they have the same instructions but this involves driving down gravel tracks and some of those instructions are also painted on to trees

[funkyrobot]

Shnozz said:

thebraketester said:

It’s no big loss to you but the fact is that people have lost out on work/money due to this.

Data wasn’t a huge issue for me but it was the fact that the voice system crashed too that cost me as I wasn’t contactable for about 2 hours.

Did it cost me money? Yes.

Do I think I desverve compo? No.

Indeed. I lost several pieces of work the value of which might have been £200 or £20,000. I will never know.

What I do know is that you realise just how reliant you are on a mobile connection. I almost felt vulnerable without one!

If you don't mind me asking, what is it that you do?

I'm not preaching here, but I would have thought that people would have a backup. Maybe at a minimum a spare SIM on a different network.

[BrabusMog]

funkyrobot said:

Shnozz said:

thebraketester said:

It’s no big loss to you but the fact is that people have lost out on work/money due to this.

Data wasn’t a huge issue for me but it was the fact that the voice system crashed too that cost me as I wasn’t contactable for about 2 hours.

Did it cost me money? Yes.

Do I think I desverve compo? No.

Indeed. I lost several pieces of work the value of which might have been £200 or £20,000. I will never know.

What I do know is that you realise just how reliant you are on a mobile connection. I almost felt vulnerable without one!

If you don't mind me asking, what is it that you do?

I'm not preaching here, but I would have thought that people would have a backup. Maybe at a minimum a spare SIM on a different network.

It's not always possible if you're part of a larger workforce. In a previous role I ran ops for a delivery service and our relatively small team of drivers had handheld devices to create proof of delivery etc. Our failsafe for this was going back to paper if there was a failure, but I'd imagine there are many small businesses that wouldn't envisage a potential failure and not have a back up. This shouldn't absolve o2 of their obligations, they provide what is now a vital piece of infrastructure and anything over a 4 hour failure is simply unacceptable.

[thebraketester]

funkyrobot said:

Shnozz said:

thebraketester said:

It’s no big loss to you but the fact is that people have lost out on work/money due to this.

Data wasn’t a huge issue for me but it was the fact that the voice system crashed too that cost me as I wasn’t contactable for about 2 hours.

Did it cost me money? Yes.

Do I think I desverve compo? No.

Indeed. I lost several pieces of work the value of which might have been £200 or £20,000. I will never know.

What I do know is that you realise just how reliant you are on a mobile connection. I almost felt vulnerable without one!

If you don't mind me asking, what is it that you do?

I'm not preaching here, but I would have thought that people would have a backup. Maybe at a minimum a spare SIM on a different network.

It's not practical to have a fall back for everything that might go wrong.

As someone previously mentioned..... where was o2s fallback plan?

[funkyrobot]

thebraketester said:

funkyrobot said:

Shnozz said:

thebraketester said:

It’s no big loss to you but the fact is that people have lost out on work/money due to this.

Data wasn’t a huge issue for me but it was the fact that the voice system crashed too that cost me as I wasn’t contactable for about 2 hours.

Did it cost me money? Yes.

Do I think I desverve compo? No.

Indeed. I lost several pieces of work the value of which might have been £200 or £20,000. I will never know.

What I do know is that you realise just how reliant you are on a mobile connection. I almost felt vulnerable without one!

If you don't mind me asking, what is it that you do?

I'm not preaching here, but I would have thought that people would have a backup. Maybe at a minimum a spare SIM on a different network.

It's not practical to have a fall back for everything that might go wrong.

As someone previously mentioned..... where was o2s fallback plan?

You are correct, it isn't. You can plan for some eventualities though. As I said above, a spare SIM on a completely different network. Doesn't work if the whole infrastructure fails, but if one network goes down you can continue.

As for service providers, I would never trust them to have a backup. I've seen many systems that are supposed to be backed up fail as soon as they are required.

[thebraketester]

In my case, I didn't realise that the voice service had gone down too. The first I knew of missed calls was when the network eventually came back on and I get a text about 3 missed calls. By that time it's too late.... work lost.

I am not gonna cry about it but its still amounts to about a days work so scale that up/down to what every you earn and its "that" annoying.

[FurtiveFreddy]

funkyrobot said:

You are correct, it isn't. You can plan for some eventualities though. As I said above, a spare SIM on a completely different network. Doesn't work if the whole infrastructure fails, but if one network goes down you can continue.

As for service providers, I would never trust them to have a backup. I've seen many systems that are supposed to be backed up fail as soon as they are required.

I seem to remember the big outage British Airways had a few years back was when they had a data centre power cut and the backup generators failed.

I did some work with Telehouse in Docklands many years ago and they famously had redundancy all over the place, but I seem to remember they had an outage or two as well.

The problem is that too many consumers expect a faultless service from everything and everyone and don't have any backup plan themselves. Then when they're caught out all they can do is cry and demand compo.

I must admit though, I didn't really have a back up plan for yesterday but I've got an EE SIM on the way to me now

The only thing is whether there would be a way to get your incoming calls diverted to another number if you couldn't connect to your primary service provider. Anyone know?

[Scabutz]

No one could contact me all day. It was fking brilliant.

[Mr Pointy]

Thisi why I like dual SIM phones. I have a Vodaphone & an O2 sim in mine.

[cobra kid]

thebraketester said:

It’s no big loss to you but the fact is that people have lost out on work/money due to this.

Data wasn’t a huge issue for me but it was the fact that the voice system crashed too that cost me as I wasn’t contactable for about 2 hours.

Did it cost me money? Yes.

Do I think I desverve compo? No.

I suppose I should add that it WOULD be a big deal in some circumstances, and that I certainly don't feel I need any recompense for it.