michaelwyres.com.au | musings of a geek

V/Line – Could It Really Be True?

Regular followers of my tweets and blog posts will know that a subject I am, shall we say, “passionate” about is the performance – (or lack thereof) – of the customer service efforts of Victoria’s regional rail provider, V/Line.

Any regular commuter with an ounce of common sense understands that things go wrong from time to time, and that these things are often completely out of the control of V/Line. Such as cement trucks landing on train lines.

Where V/Line constantly fail is keeping their customers informed about what is going on when things do go wrong. This should be a basic customer service principle.

Following what turned out to be my immensely popular blog post following the “fuel fault” incident last week, I was contacted by V/Line, seeking my input in regards to what they can do to improve their customer communications.

Say what? Could it be they are finally ready to listen? Oh, the shock and awe.

I’m happy to help them too. This has been the reason I’ve complained long and loud about this subject, and it seems I have finally had some measure of success. There’s no point ignoring the opportunity.

So, here’s YOUR challenge.

If you are reading this post, and you feel you want something brought to their attention about their customer service efforts, please post your thoughts in the comments of this post – I’ll be only to happy to collate them up and send them on to my contact at V/Line.

We’ve all complained long and hard – now lets put our thoughts where our mouths are – while they’re listening.

ABC News 72

In a general sense, news tickers at the bottom of the screen on news channels annoy me. They often distract you from what is actually going on on the rest of the screen, and you end up missing what people say.

It is even more annoying when the news being reported in the ticker is out of date. Try this one from ABC News 24 this morning – August 3rd, 2011:

“AFL: Melbourne coach Dean Bailey sacked.”

Wasn’t Bailey sacked THREE days ago?

ABC News 24, or ABC News 72?

More than a little out of date guys! Surely there’s been something happening in the AFL since Sunday?

A Tad Insensitive, Advertiser

Just caught a glimpse of this rather insensitive closing line of an article about the unfortunate death of a local man over the weekend in a workplace accident, in the Geelong Advertiser.

“Are you the family of the deceased man?”

Seriously? Poor form.

My thoughts to the family.

NBN Will Not Require Rewiring!

Last week we were subjected to the ridiculous notion that the NBN was hacked. Of course, it wasn’t hacked in any way whatsoever – the story perpetuating from a piece of lazy and sensationalistic journalism, apparently from a staff writer at the Sydney Morning Herald.

Another myth that has been floating around for a long time is that home owners will be required to undertake an expensive recabling effort to prepare their homes for the arrival of the National Broadband Network (NBN).

This too, is completely false – it is “something” that “someone” said “somewhere”, and has been taken up by opponents of the network as another reason not to go ahead with the project.

So it’s time to detail exactly how your NBN connection will look as opposed to your current – (most likely) – ADSL-based setup, and demonstrate how little actually changes. Here’s a diagram of a typical ADSL setup – click for larger:

Your ADSL modem/router connects over the Telstra copper network to a device called a DSLAM, located in your local telephone exchange.

There are various companies supplying DSLAM connectivity across the country, including Telstra, Optus, TPG, and Internode to name a few. Your ADSL connection uses the Telstra copper to connect to one of them. Not all of these companies have DSLAMs in every exchange.

From there, your ISP uses a backhaul network – (sometimes its own, sometimes of another provider) – to get your connection into its own network. It then uses its own network connectivity to get your traffic to and from the internet at large.

Inside your house, all of the devices – (such as PCs, laptops, and smartphones) – connect to your ADSL modem/router to access the internet connectivity described above.

On a conceptual level, it is all very simple. How will it change when the NBN comes along? Here’s a diagram of how a typical NBN setup will look – click for larger:

Your modem/router connects through the Network Termination Unit (NTU), over the NBN Co fibre-based AVC to a device called a Fibre Access Node (FAN), most likely located in your local telephone exchange. Under the NBN, there will only be one provider of this connectivity – NBN Co – and through its infrastructure, your NBN connection reaches the edge of their network at a so-called Point of Interconnect (POI).

Inside your house, all of the devices – (such as PCs, laptops, and smartphones) – connect to your modem/router to access the internet connectivity described above.

Not a lot of difference really, is there?

Certainly no rewiring of your home. Most people will need a new modem/router, but most ISPs will offer that as part of connecting you to the NBN. Some people won’t need a new router at all, but that won’t be particularly common.

The only difference as far as a household is concerned is the addition of the NTU. Instead of connecting your modem directly to the Telstra wall socket as you do now, the new fibre coming into your home will run to the NTU, into which your modem will connect.

The beauty of the NTU is that it offers you six ports, instead of a single Telstra wall socket, allowing up to six separate and distinct services to be set up into your home.

Even in the areas that will be served with wireless and satellite – and not by fibre – the NTU is identical, so still nothing changes.

This stupid idea that you have to spend an exorbitant amount of money rewiring your home is much fuss and ado about nothing.

It’s simply not true.

From The Vault: Last to First!

One more from the video collection, the last lap of the fabulous 1995 Tooheys 1000, on the first lap of which Larry Perkins collided with Craig Lowndes.

The contact tore the tyre valve from the front left wheel of Perkins’ car, and after pitting for a new wheel and tyre and ending up more than a lap down after later being passed by then race leader Jim Richards, Perkins and co-driver Russell Ingall started the fight back.

History will always recall that it took an engine failure from Glenn Seton nine laps from home to give Perkins the lead, but to have been there in second to take the lead after the drama at the start speaks volumes of the speed of the #11 car that day, to chase down the entire field.

Classic memories – and watch for a young Jack Perkins in tears after his father’s win.

Our Customers Are Idiots: V/Line

Long suffering Geelong V/Line customers copped another penalty for trying to do the right thing and support public transport yesterday morning when the 4:43am service from Marshall to Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station ran out of fuel at Footscray, halting all trains behind it.

This included metropolitan services on the Werribee and Williamstown lines, and caused “knock-on” effects in other parts of the network.

Thousands of commuters were disrupted because someone didn’t put enough fuel in the tank. I mean seriously, incompetent much?

Of course, V/Line themselves came up with a raft of the usual excuses, and even some new ones.

“The gauge was checked this morning as it always is, from the outside. It appeared that there was enough ‘petrol’ in the tank. The driver doesn’t have that same gauge in the cabin and it broke down at Footscray unfortunately.”

(NOTE: I’ve chosen to ignore the fact that if they had put petrol in the tank, it wouldn’t have got anywhere – (let alone Footscray) – since it runs on diesel fuel.)

“He did check the gauge on the train and it appeared there was enough fuel to make the trip.”

So, he checked the gauge – but not the tank? How about giving the tank a quick tap with your foot, to see if it SOUNDS empty? Or having a look INSIDE the tank? Or – (and this is a radical idea) – how about just filling all the tanks up at the start of each day?

A few simple tests and/or procedures and none of this debacle would have occurred.

The bottom line is, as people with (hopefully) common sense, commuters do understand that things go wrong from time to time. Shit happens as they say. We accept that.

V/Line’s biggest problem is (still) its ability to not communicate with its passengers when things do go wrong.

This incident occurred at 5:45am. At this point, alarms should be ringing, and customers should start getting informed. The response from V/Line?

Nothing.

I boarded a train at North Geelong at 6:33am – was there any platform announcement to expect delays? No. If there had been, I would have returned to my car and driven to work, so as to not be late to the seminar I was attending yesterday morning.

When the train reached Lara at about 6:45am, the conductor informed us of the problem, and that we’d be delayed. Of course, I was now many kilometres from my car back at North Geelong, and now had no choice but to wait out the delay.

And they’d already known for an hour – so yes, I was late for my seminar.

Poor excuse for customer service, no? This is not an isolated incident – this is exactly how V/Line perform whenever there is a problem. How about this one, or even this one?

And who could forget this one?

Well, today there has been even more demonstration of the contempt V/Line holds for their customers. Of their “vlineinform” Twitter account, they said today:

“The way it was set up was to only look for delays of more than 30 minutes. We are in the process now of fixing that.”

Oh really? Why was it spitting out these updates on Tuesday night?

Forgive my maths, but are not delays of “15 mins” and “28 mins” less than “30 mins”?

Let’s flash forward to yesterday morning, where delays of “up to 47 minutes” were experienced as a result of the “fuel fault”.

Hang on – now there aren’t any tweets at all about the Geelong line, even though there are delays of “47 minutes” which is more than “30 minutes”.

What?

So setup “to only look for delays of more than 30 minutes” is clearly wrong. A lie, or just no idea.

So lets make something up.

Notice also the tweet from Metro Trains of delays of “50 minutes” in regards to this EXACT incident. I think that’s more than “47 minutes” as well.

How are the V/Line trains being delayed for a shorter period of time, on the same piece of track?

We do have a brain V/Line. We see what’s going on, we are intelligent people.

Pointless PR rubbish that is just clearly wrong, and simply never keeping your customers informed is just contempt for the people who pay to ride your “services”.

Ultimately, we give you a job. A job you’re not doing – and we’re sick of it.

Best Office Practical Joke Ever!

Well, it’s not really a practical joke, but one could be forgiven for thinking this was.

The tenancy across the way from our office is currently being gutted after the vacation of the previous tenant a few weeks ago. Work has been progressing at a fairly rapid rate, but perhaps something was forgotten?

What’s that in the far corner? That’s right – it’s a fully functional office. Desk, drawers, even a cupboard, waste paper bins and other office supplies.

How cool a practical joke would it be to have the boss away on holiday, only to have him return to his office and discover that the rest of the office had been stripped out around him?

Too funny.

The Australian FUDs It Again

There’s been a lot of rumbling, particularly since the 2010 Federal Election, in regards to a perceived media bias against the Australian Labor Party and its policies, particularly from Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited newspapers – most notably The Australian, our “national” paper.

For me, their ongoing campaign, especially in the light of the News Of The World phone hacking scandal, reeks more and more of petty attacks on the ALP, all the time.

For the record, I am certainly not a fan of Labor governments – I have never voted Labor in my life. As an IT professional who believes in the power of technology and the promise of a connected world, I am however – (as regular readers would know) – a supporter of their National Broadband Network (NBN) policy.

Which is why the following headline out of The Australian IT RSS feed caught my attention this morning:

Go ahead. Read the story. A story that has nothing at all to do with the NBN, but the editorial staff at The Australian decided to create the vaguest of completely vague links to a project they have long been critical of.

This is how it appeared in the RSS feed:

Disturbingly, notice here that the article is titled: “Truckie Arrested After Hacking Into NBN”?

A different title.

Being from the RSS feed, this is how many people would have found the article in their newsreaders this morning. Completely inaccurate, but they did move it along a little bit though:

“The man was last night charged with 50 offences after he allegedly hacked into Platform Network, one of the 12 service providers selected to roll out trials of the $36 billion NBN.”

As NBN Co themselves have stated since this report emerged:

“NBN Co has evaluated its systems and controls and can confirm the national broadband network was not affected by this incident.”

And quoting from the article:

“In June, Australian Federal Police (AFP) investigators found a compromise to Platform Networks, a wholesale internet provider in Sydney that is one of the contracted providers of the NBN release. NBN Co says it is not yet providing it services to the NBN.”

Interestingly, Platform Networks had the affected systems sandboxed away from their main network when they became aware of the attacks.

So the real story is that a guy, probably using off-the-shelf open source downloadable hacking tools, hacked an ISP in December 2010, long before that ISP had signed any kind of agreement with NBN Co, let alone had any services with them – (and still don’t) – and who spotted the problem and isolated the part of their network that was affected.

And the best The Australian can do is: “Truckie Arrested for Hacking NBN”? Yet another cheap shot against the policy, and the government.

Stop trying to make news, and actually report the news. Ironic that you are called “News Limited” – since your ability to report “news” seems rather “limited” at times.

Lift your game guys – everyone is watching after the News of the World debacle, so why act like tools now? Oh, yeah – you want to bring the government down.

Well, you fail. And you will be called out on it.

Peter Brock – Has It Really Been Five Years?

It is really hard to imagine that it has been almost five years since we lost Peter Brock. The anniversary is only a matter of a little over a month away.

Trawling through another section of my old video collection over the weekend, I found this interesting snippet of Brock being interviewed by Channel Seven’s Pat Welsh at the 1997 AMP Bathurst Super Touring 1000, just a couple of weeks before his retirement from full time racing after the V8 Supercar 1000.

This is significant because it highlights just about the only time Brock ever rolled a racing car – a Triple Eight Race Engineering Vauxhall Vectra he shared that weekend with former Formula One pilot, Derek Warwick.

We still miss you Brocky.

NBN – Commonwealth Guarantee

In this the final instalment of my series on the recently signed Telstra/NBN Co deal, I will highlight what I believe are the interesting and/or important parts of the last of the eight individual agreements – the Commonwealth Guarantee (CG).

All descriptions are taken from the Telstra release to the ASX.

As a summary, the CG as described is:

“The Commonwealth Guarantee is a guarantee by the Commonwealth in favour of Telstra in relation to NBN Co’s obligations under the IID, SA, ISA, and AD (Guaranteed Agreements).”

The CG is an interesting agreement between Telstra and the government, which more or less provides Telstra with confidence that they will receive the payments specified in the IID, SA, ISA, and the AD – the four agreements signed between Telstra and NBN Co. Quoting directly from the Telstra ASX release again:

“The Commonwealth has guaranteed to Telstra the payments required to be paid by NBN Co to Telstra in connection with the Guaranteed Agreements. The amount that the Guarantee covers represents our estimate of NBN Co’s potential aggregate liabilities to Telstra, at any given time while the Guarantee is on foot and in circumstances where NBN Co, for some reason, does not meet its commitments to Telstra.”

To me, the screams Telstra playing hardball. It sounds like Telstra have said in tidying up all of these agreements “hey, this whole arrangement is too good to be true – can we get this in writing?”

The CG remains in place – leaving the Commonwealth liable for maintaining the agreed NBN Co payments to Telstra – until such time that NBN Co has achieved a specified – (not defined in the ASX release) – credit rating, through which NBN Co would be able to guarantee the payments, based on its ability to borrow against that credit rating.

For the CG to terminate, one of two project milestones must also be met.

Either the Commonwealth has provided to NBN Co working capital up to $27.5b – (subject to change with respect to variations in NBN Co business plan), or the Minister for Communications declares the NBN complete and operational.

I believe this has significant ramifications for any change of government policy – (and indeed, any change of government) – that might see the cessation of the NBN project.

Under the assumption that the Telstra shareholders approve the entire deal later this year, and the commencement date of the agreements is reached, this may lock in a big financial settlement towards Telstra if the project is halted.

This may be a hurdle that an incoming Coalition government – who have indicated they would halt the project – may find is too high to jump. Time would only tell if that came to pass. It would certainly generate many issues.

Is it as high as $27.5b? Probably not – but it will be significant.

What a tangled web we weave!