Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

A recent report from the Sydney Morning Herald didn't strike a lot of people by surprise, even though it left many pretty unhappy. More specifically, it was another outage for Telstra (News - Alert)'s mobile and broadband network operations, one that came hot on the heels of the last outage, making the weekend almost completely free of Internet access for some Australians.

The previous outage only hit days before, and this left Telstra customers seething. Said customers turned to social media—and likely using other networks to get there—across large portions of Australia, including Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. Given that Telstra is the largest phone network in Australia, this was likely a substantial number of customers left out in the cold. Interestingly, not even Telstra seemed all that sure of just how long the outage lasted, with a Telstra spokesman noting that “all services have been restored” following the discovery of a “faulty hardware” issue that had been isolated accordingly.

Yet this seems somewhat disputed by Telstra customers, who reported sending both tweets and emails to Fairfax Media directly, with complaints often focused on the Telstra Gateway (News - Alert) modem. One such issue noted that “Telstra tried to do a firmware upgrade on their Gateway modems, and it didn't go to plan resulting in a constant loop of resetting.”

The outage came at perhaps the worst time possible, as it not only came shortly after a previous outage, but also after the company's chief executive Andy Penn told users it was committed to improving its customer service, noting how strong and resilient the network actually was. Telstra also committed a combined $50 million to addressing network issues, including $25 million for monitoring tools and $25 million to speed recovery time when the network does go down.

It's the same story the world over; those valuable networks we depend on are often a lot more fragile than we care to admit. The power grid is no different in that regard, and for those whose business and entire way of life depends on regular electricity, even a limited outage can be a disaster. That's why power protection systems are so worthwhile, like those offered by Minuteman. With such systems, users have the ability to save work and shut down systems properly instead of just stopping right at the power outage. Backup systems of sufficient size and capability can allow a system to run as if no power outage had happened for at least some time, so anyone who depends on electrical systems should be looking into a system at least like Minuteman's to help protect that power at a moment's notice.

Power, Internet, phone ... these systems can all go down at a moment's notice. Being ready when these do, meanwhile, can mean the difference between opportunities lost and recaptured. A power protection system can make all the difference here.