Network Congestion - Food for thought

Emre Y.

According to Fizz, today's outage is caused by network congestion

Official statement: Friday December 7th, 11:45

We confirm that the heavy traffic on our network is the reason why some Fizz members cannot make/receive calls or texts. Our team is working to address the situation.

 

Friday December 7th, 10:45

We noticed heavy traffic on our network, which would explain why some members cannot make/receive calls or send/receive texts. We’re currently investigating to pinpoint the cause as soon as possible."

 

Why is this only happening to Fizz? My understanding is that Fizz uses the Videotron Network and therefore if network congestion was the real issue shouldn't Videotron customers also be expirenceing outtages?

Kenny L. #23

I assume the "network" consists of many entities, some shared, some not and the issue is only affecting parts that are unique to Fizz.

Emre Y.

@Kenny L. Wouldn't a fix be as simple then just reallocate the allotment for Fizz users?

FizzWiggler G.

End to end from calling mobile to called mobile a call has to pass through at least 25-30 network elements/boxes. Even if some of these are shared, not all of them are. Mostly in sub-brands, what is shared is the radio network. Lots of other things can be congested also and they may not be shared.
Basically, Kenny is correct and respectfully Emre, it's not that easy.
I've been working in mobile for 20 years (engineer, commercials, product....)

P C. #31

@FizzWiggler G., Thanks for explaination!

Emre Y.

@FizzWiggler G. Thanks for the info, I am just trying to figure out why these outages are so long and frequent. It seems like Fizz should be better prepared as they are owned by Videotron a company with quite a lot of experience.

GB

It's weird since for the other companies, when their major company's experiencing an outage, more times than not, the sub-company goes down as well.
It does not seem to be the case with Fizz, so this leaves me even more concerned on how much of a compromise Fizz has against even the parent network to further bring costs down. Pricing is one thing, but that's only with the condition that network is stable. This has got to be the worst network I have seen so far, and I think I've tried out all the new entrants when they first came out.

FizzWiggler G.

@ VC You are very welcome.
Just for context, my old employer O2 UK went offline for a whole day yesterday. 32 million subscribers offline. Google it! Heads will roll. Millions in lost revenue.
It's not amazing, certainly not and I'm not suggesting it is, but it does happen. So many connected elements makes it hard to a) trace and b) rectify.

FizzWiggler G.

@VC You are very welcome
@Seong S. O2 UK went down yesterday for a whole day; 32 million subcribers and all hosted networks: Sky, giffgaff, Lyca, Lebara and Tesco to name just a few.
Not unheard of! Not amazing either, I know!

humonculi

I work in IT it's not as simple as they are using videotron's network (not like a highway) every use has an ID etc traffic has to be managed and servers need to be setup in a way to be able to manage all of it. Maybe a serveur went down while they were doing some maintenance and it crashed causing many people to not have service.

Emre Y.

@Abanoub B. Maybe I am naive but shouldn't they have been better prepared? I have been with many new careers throughout the years but they never had this many problems. The service that Fizz is offering is a fantastic deal if only it would work reliably as it stands it is difficult to recommend to anyone.

MoYe

FizzWiggler G. Thanks for the info

Kenny L. #23

@FizzWiggler G. Thanks for shedding some light on this.