NBN Co claims progress in fortnight-long Sky Muster internet outage

NBN technicians are said to have made “significant progress” resolving issues that have left hundreds of Sky Muster customers with no internet service since December 21.

The issue initially took 34 percent - just under 38,000 - of NBN Co’s satellite customers offline, with an unknown additional number experiencing slow or otherwise degraded services.

An NBN Co spokesperson told iTnews that “most … satellite services were restored soon after the issue occurred” on December 21, but that approximately 600 premises - about half of one percent of the total installed base - were still awaiting resolution.

Multiple retail service providers (RSPs), as well as the government-funded Regional Tech Hub, published a statement from NBN Co on Tuesday afternoon that suggested a fix for customers who had been offline for the past fortnight had been found.

"Significant progress has been made overnight,” the statement reads.

“A remote solution for services completely offline has been identified. Services with planned [technician] appointments due to this issue are being prioritised.”

The statement suggested that in addition to a remote fix for customer premises equipment (CPE), NBN Co technicians are performing software upgrades at satellite ground stations to fix the degraded connectivity for customers that have remained online during the problems.

iTnews asked NBN Co for comment on the root cause of the network issues. 

A company spokesperson responded saying that an “incident” involving one of its two satellites had occurred at around 8.30pm on December 21.

The spokesperson said that an investigation into the incident remains underway.

Status advisories suggest that NBN Co technicians unsuccessfully sought to resolve the issues across a number of evenings in the final days of 2021.

The advisories also show an increasing level of frustration at the extended duration of the outage and lack of available information on the root cause.

“SkyMesh has been and will continue to place extreme pressure on NBN Co for an outcome for these services and expect further information from NBN Co with urgency today,” SkyMesh said in an advisory earlier today.

“SkyMesh, to date, are yet to receive any solid communication on the root cause of these ongoing issues.

“We will continue to advocate and work alongside NBN Co at their request to get this outage resolved."

“We've been in constant communication with NBN Co in order to fix these services, with NBN Co advising us they have been continuously troubleshooting and working on a solution,” Activ8me said in a separate advisory today.

RSPs said that the fixes identified on Tuesday were being represented by NBN Co as “solid progress towards restoration”, although they hastened to add that some services would remain offline or degraded, and that RSPs had no influence on the order that services might be restored in.

RSPs added that NBN Co had not offered a timeline for restoration yet, and that an “NBN system update over the coming week” is required to resolve the ongoing issues.

NBN Co apologised to satellite customers impacted by the extended outage and degradation.