Telstra services and the Japan earthquake
Dear Editor,
As a result of Friday’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan, there have been multiple cable breaks and damage to communications infrastructure in the vicinity. Telstra is extremely satisfied with its network performance throughout these events. Telstra’s network remained operational in and out of Japan, although there was some minimal infrastructure and service disruption. All services have been fully restored since Tuesday, March 15.
Telstra Employees in Japan
We are pleased to advise that all employees and their families based in the Telstra Japan office are safe and accounted for.
Telstra International Group will not be evacuating employees from our Tokyo office. Their safety is of the utmost importance to us, however our employees are Japanese local residents and they choose to be with their family and friends at this time. We are working closely with the local management team to monitor the situation and we will continue to support our employees throughout this extremely difficult time.
Impact on Telstra International’s services and cable systems
Telstra’s IP services were immediately and seamlessly switched over to unaffected cable capacity, as a result of our resilient network infrastructure and redundancy, ensuring zero impact on customers.
In relation to our bandwidth (International Private Line) services, the Reach North Asia Loop (RNAL) and AJC (Australia-Japan), cable systems were unaffected by the earthquake. We did however experience some impact following the failure of the northern pacific route cables out of Japan (JUS and APCN 2). Restoration of impacted services commenced immediately. Through our network contingency plans, the team was able to fully recover all services using the Tata Global Network (TGN), China-US (CHUS) and Asia America Gateway (AAG) cables systems for connection over the pacific. Customers have experienced fully restored services with bandwidth ranges from 2M to 10G.
Our PoPs and Cable Landing Stations, maintain full service via designed back-up power sources, and we are confident that we can manage any planned or unplanned power outages over the coming days and weeks.
Our team is continuing to monitor the situation closely.
For concerned family members and friends in Australia
As concerned people (in AUS) attempted to contact family and friends in the affected areas, Telstra saw voice volumes surge more than 17 times over the previous 24 hours. This placed considerable strain on the network and although customers experienced some congestion because of traffic volumes and damage to infrastructure in Japan, efforts by Telstra’s Voice Network Operating Centre (VNOC) ensured that continuity for Telstra customers was maintained.
As a result of this demand, Telstra yesterday announced free telephone calls and text messages for customers wishing to check on family and friends affected by the disaster. Telstra customers calling Japan from their fixed-line telephone or Telstra mobile phone, or sending text messages from their Telstra mobile phone, can do so free of charge between 6:00am Friday 11 March and 6:00am on Friday 25 March.
Telstra is expecting very high levels of traffic over the period of free calls / SMSs and customers are asked to please be mindful of the continuing difficulties of service provision to areas still affected by infrastructure damage, especially Sendai and its surrounding towns.
Donation to the Japanese Red Cross
Telstra has pledged an AU$100,000 contribution to the Japanese Red Cross Society through Telstra International Group. At such a challenging time, it is important for businesses like Telstra to support the communities in which we operate. Telstra has strong ties to Japan, with a number of employees based in Tokyo servicing our local customers and many employees in Australia with family and friends affected by the disaster. Telstra is committed to supporting its customers and the Japanese community through this emergency.
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Please feel free to contact me if you have further questions for Telstra.
Best Regards,
Xiao Yu
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Tan Xiao Yu
Senior Consultant
40A Orchard Road
#07-01 MacDonald House
Singapore 238 838
P 65 6825 8032
F 65 6822 8000
M 65 9826 3649
