East Coast Earthquake 8-23-2011 - comment and a bit of a Christchurch Telco report :)

Thu Aug 25 09:58:52 UTC 2011

> Radio - That was very interesting to observe.  Clearly radio stations don't 
> have disaster broadcast plans in place for content.  When you're crying out 
> for information about what's going on, the very last think you want to hear 
> is an inappropriate advert break.  The number of stations that kept 
> broadcasting adverts for 'exciting things in Christchurch' was un-nerving. 
> It's my view that media news desks also need to remember to listeners who are 
> in the middle of the disaster area and are hanging on every word of their 
> 'emergency radio'.  To hear that my city is 'devastated by a MASSIVE earth 
> quake and hundreds of people have been killed' every 10 minutes in the 'over 
> hyped' news reader voice gets very alarming.

Commercial, nationwide-broadcast radio stations are not going to (by their 
very nature) broadcast disaster-information on a continuous basis as a 
significant proportion of their listener base may not be directly 
affected, and dont necessarily need the trauma.  There's a psychological 
hit in this, and value in keeping up the norm as much as is reasonable.

On the other hand I expect that Radio New Zealand was one of the better 
transmitters involved, and to a lesser degree any radio station whos focus 
is talkback is going to be better value than someone who plays pop music.

> It was interesting to observe later in the day the whole tone of broadcast 
> changed.  It seemed the media started to realise that this was in fact a very 
> serious disaster and not just something they could/should beat up for ratings 
> and ad revenues.  Many stations are now all broadcast out of Auckland (over 
> 1000km away and completely unaffected by the quake)

This is a cynical approach to what happened, in my (Auckland based) 
opinion.  In the early stages information would've been relatively hard to 
come by, responders were very much in an all-hands-to-the-pump 
running-on-instinct phase and the scale of the incident means that 
regional and national emergency response needed to be spun up. As 
resources arrived from outside the immediately affected area, information 
began to be handled in a more structured fashion and the picture became 
clearer.

I watched the live coverage as much as I was able from the office when the 
quake struck, but the truth is that it was a few hours before solid data 
(that didnt mean repeating the same several datapoints) was forthcoming in 
any major volume.

> We have had one new local radio station establish as a result of the quake. 
> A group further down the country brought a caravan of equipment and set up a 
> temporary transmitter in the most impacted part of the city.  The result was 
> so successful that the station has stayed on air.

This is a success story in my opinion; I imagine it'll have value during 
the recovery phase but I expect it'll remain relatively small, assuming 
theres any intention to continue with it long term.  Local radio stations 
seem to be going the way of local-anything; being superceded by larger 
organisations that can benefit from scale.  The ISP world is no different.

> filtered.  Clearly some very careful consideration was given in the TV 
> broadcast space.

Emergency Services and the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency 
Management have dedicated media liason for exactly this reason, and 
clued-up mainstream media are not stupid. Im more impressed that there 
wasn't more carnage published on Youtube, etc, from 
joe-insensitive-camcorder.

> Impact on the media did become evident over the following two weeks.  One 
> broadcaster simply lost the plot at one point.  It became evident that media 
> presenters were becoming more effected by the disaster as time went on.  I 
> can understand this.  Being told "Hey, stand there... because it will be a 
> 'money shot'" takes some real guts when you consider that 'there' is in front 
> of a building that could fall on you in the next aftershock.

The broadcasters are human.  The Christchurch quake is the single biggest 
event of our generation (in NZ) and most of the broadcasters had never 
seen anything that big or signficant. The human cost hits home.  Ithink 
it's cynical to think of 'money shot' type approaches... whilst every 
journo and cameraman wants good footage, you make them sound more callous 
than I expect they were.

>
> IPTV.
>
> Moving into an IPTV world is going to be very interesting in the disaster 
> space in my view.  We currently have FTA DVB-T & S and still have analogue 
> transmission.  So a 12volt inverter in your car and you can keep watching 
> media.  But what's going to happen in an IPTV world where most of the heavy 
> data lifting is done via fibre?
>

I personally feel that low-complexity analogue systems work well as the 
lowest common denominator, and despite the fact i'm an IP engineer I 
harbour some concerns about the movement away from basic, tried-and-true 
technologies that involve substantially fewer OSI layers.  However, TV in 
NZ will be pure digital in the next year or two and that's going to add an 
additional dependency for Television.  Broadcast radio will be a ways 
behind I expect, as there isnt as much competition for the spectrum.  Im 
certainly in no rush to see us move to Digital Broadcast Radio.

> While I did loose text messaging, I never lost my telephone service or email 
> connection.  My phone service is on VoIP.  I have a client on my mobile 
> phone.  So my service just transferred to my mobile even though my home lost 
> power.  When the mobile data 3G net failed, I then flicked to 2G GPRS data, 
> then when that failed my power was back and we returned to the HFC cable.

This isnt necessarily a success story.  All of the above has a heavy 
dependency on mains power. You're probably lucky that you retained 
sufficient battery endurance for the time you had no mains power.  Yet 
another observation; the trend toward Smartphones is also a trend toward 
devices that you're lucky to get 2 days of standby on, in comparison to 
older, more basic handsets that might give you a week between charges.

Another risk.

I see VOIP as more risky than copper POTS due to the inability to rely on 
the service 'just working'.  Where the exchange - a decent facility with 
significant investment in redundant power - can backfill power needs for 
an extended period back along the copper pair, this has got to be better 
than the average VOIP user who probably has no redundant power option at 
all.  The corded-phone harvest would be no good for anyone who was fully 
on VOIP... even those end-nodes that have gel-cell batteries fitted for 
service during a power-failure would only be good for a few hours at best. 
How many residential properties have a Generator available?

> WIRELESS IS FASTER.
>
> One thing I will note is that once you're all 'IP', wireless technology 
> becomes a much faster way of getting back on line.  We had to relocate over 
> 50,000 workers out of the CBD.  Many businesses have commented that their 
> only data choice was a point to point wireless solution.  They were very 
> surprised to discover how quickly those services could be commissioned and 
> how much more performance they could get for the same money they'd been 
> paying for fixed line service delivery.
>

Wireless, especially on unlicensed spectrum, has nowhere near the SLA that 
a typical fibre (or even copper business-grade) service can provide. You 
have a fight for spectrum, and latency/jitter figures that dont compare.

It has its place though and ive no doubt that folks will be more open to a 
service than can be uplifted and moved relatively easily, especially at 
the moment with many businesses operating in temporary premesis while 
their red-zone office spaces have their futures decided.

I would also not be surprised to see many of these folks tend back to 
fibre type services once theyre established in new permanent premesis.

One wireless last-mile provider I spoke to a few weeks ago was describing 
to me how one of their key transmission sites was the roof of a 
red-stickered building thats now marked for demolition.  The very 
geography that works well for large, high powered transmission (ala TV) 
does not lend itself to shared-spectrum, nodal stuff such as wireless IP. 
You still need adequately connected locations that you can place RF kit 
on, with sufficiently-decent antennas to provide the right mix of 
directionality and coverage to ensure you can use and re-use your 
relatively limited spectrum to support the highest number of customers 
possible.  Wireless is a mixed bag, but it is indeed better than nothing.

Mark.