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When the unthinkable happens (as it just has)

We take the reliability and ubiquity of modern internet access as a normal state of affairs these days.

The roll out of fibre-based broadband plus the alternatives of 4/5G wireless solutions as well as the orbiting satellites behind systems such as StarLink have effectively meant we can be connected anywhere, anytime with close to 100 percent uptime.

This is pretty important because virtually every business is now super-dependent on that connectivity.

Whether it's access to electronic transaction processing for retailers or a reliance on cloud-based services and databses, if your company loses its internet conenctivity it may no longer be able to function at full capacity -- or maybe even at all.

Spare a thought for the residents of Sydney's Norwest Business Park then.

Located about 35Km North-West of the Sydney CBD, this business park is home to over 400 businesses which employ around 25,000 people.

It's also home to an old IBM datacentre which is currently being renovated and significantly expanded to become a home for AI servers.

In short, this is a pretty big place and many of the businesses are office-blocks housing companies which are highly reliant on cloud-based services such as those provided by Google, Amazon and the like. A loss of connectivity, for even a few hours, can be a big problem for these companies.

Imagine the consternation therefore, when last Friday, all the blinky lights on those hundreds of fibre modems stopped flashing and computers all around the park began delivering timeout errors whenever an attempt was made to send or receive packets from outside their own LANs.

Of course this is 2026 so any such outage would be short-lived, right?

Well that was the optimistic outlook -- but the day dragged on and the much needed internet connectivity did not return.

This was a significant outage within Australia's very expensive National Broadband Network -- what was going on?

It seems that a local contractor had been doing renovation work on a section of footpath near the park and had uprooted the crucial fiber-optic cable that delivers all those essential bits to those hundreds of businesses.

Haha... I can empathise. This is very similar to the incident that knocked out internet services to half of my own town (Tokoroa) a year or so ago. We lost connectivity for several days, while technicians ran around trying to lay and commission new cable. In our case it was barely 100m of fiber that had been damaged but it still took days to repair.

Right now there is no firm estimate as to when service will be restored and comminications seem to indicate that one of the main hurdles is all the permissions, authorities and sign-offs require to even start such work. Bureaucracy derails technology yet again.

Even the prospect of providing an interim fix by way of a length (500m) of fiber situated above ground seems to have been dismissed due to the minefield of "health and safety" regulations that would need to be traversed before such temporary solution could be started.

Of course there are alternative ways to connect, right?

Well apparently none that are practical.

YouTuber Dave Jones who runs the EEVBlog YouTube channel was one of the first to rush out and buy a 5G hotspot in an attempt to get back online at his office in the business park. Initially, results looked promising but it seems that many other businesses in that same park have had the same idea and now he's experiencing real connectivity and throughput issues that have made that option pretty much useless. It looks as if the local cell sites have been utterly overloaded by the spike in demand.

Suggestions that he go with StarLink are also a no-go apparently. His office is in the middle of one of the office blocks, with no windows. This means a StarLink system would get no signal and apparently even those who do have a view of the sky are finding the SpaceX system to be unreliable at best because half the sky is blocked by the building they're in.

So why not throw a StarLink receiver on the roof and just drop a cable down?

Nope... apparently all sorts of bureaucratic restrictions get in the way of that too, many of them related to fire regulations. Cableways can't be unsealed unless they're re-certified or some such thing.

It seems that many of the 400+ businesses currently affected have simply decided to shut up shop and some may have sent workers off to work from home, especially as it has been suggested that the restoration of service may not be completed until the 8th of May.

As we continue to move towards a world where the rise of AI is making the cost of local computing unaffordable (skyrocketing RAM, GPU and disk prices) and cloud-based services have become virtually mandatory, perhaps more thought should be given to the effect that internet outages can have on a business's ability to operate. This may be especially relevant here in New Zealand where earthquake, flood or volcanic activity could easily take out crucial sections of our fibre network for significant periods of time.

Carpe Diem folks!

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