The arrival of tropical cyclone Fina and the start of summer in just over a week, herald the peak time for extreme weather. At a major communications centre, teams are hard at work monitoring the various networks that help keep impacted communities connected.
00:00I'm taking you inside for an exclusive look at the National Operations Centre for NBN.
00:08You see, we're at that time of the year where those weather events, those serious emergency situations start to take place.
00:17This is peak season right now.
00:19And we think about fire, we think about SES, we think about those emergency services that really kick into gear at this time of year.
00:28But what about connectivity? How do we stay connected? Who's doing it? And from where?
00:34Well, it happens here in the National Operations Centre. This place does not sleep.
00:40It is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And I'm joined with Darren now. Darren, what is going on in here?
00:49It is a hive of activity and you're keeping us connected. Tell us a little bit more.
00:54The preparations have been in place for many, many months. We learn from last year's events and we apply those learnings to our future ways of working going forward.
01:02We also take a lot of inputs from the Bureau of Meteorology. We stage equipment based on intelligence that we get.
01:08And we can make sure we're training our teams and our field teams as well, which is quickly important, to make sure that we're ready to respond at a moment's notice.
01:16And when that moment's notice happens, when there is an emergency, what happens in here?
01:22This room actually manages the network across all of Australia. But the natural disaster events you refer to don't necessarily happen across all of Australia.
01:31So we need to make sure we're managing those natural disaster events very, very closely, working with emergency service organisations, communicating with the media, with the public to make sure they're aware of what's going on.
01:42But also, we need to keep our eyes on the rest of the country at the same time. We have in the past been managing bushfires in the northeast of Australia and floods in the southwest of Australia.
01:53So we've got to keep our eyes and ears on the entire country at any point in time.
01:56How many people are working collectively to keep us connected?
02:00Oh, that's a large number. So there's a number in this room, obviously, which is what we would call our shifts team, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
02:08But because we do keep our eyes and ears across all of Australia, we work with field teams.
02:12So we have many, many different field teams located all around the country that can always be ready to respond to any situation that presents.
02:18But how should we prepare in terms of keeping ourselves connected when, say, the power goes out?
02:23Yeah, that's a really good question as well. So we do need to plan for that. We do need to prepare ourselves for those situations.
02:29Power does go out through natural disaster events. I think we're all aware of that.
02:33But how we respond is something we really need to be very, very careful of.
02:37Charging our mobile phones, keeping spare batteries available.
02:40Make sure you've got all of your key documents ready to go.
02:44But I think also something that people can do, particularly at the moment, is look at potentially upgrading their service.
02:50And if people want more information about staying connected, where should we head?
02:54We've got a lot of tips on our NBN website, so nbnco.com.au, and we'll be able to get everything from there.
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