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The truth about Spark's fizzle

As Spark struggled to cope with a problem in its network on Friday it seems that they began grasping at straws.

Instead of supporting customers and simply fessing up to the fact that "we have no idea why our network is rooted", Spark opted to blame customers instead. After all, how could customers feel disgruntled and upset if the problems were of their own making?

The company's first attack on customers was to suggest that the issues were caused by negligent users who hadn't keep their anti-virus software up to date and were therefore infected with malware.

Shame on these careless people and a pox on their house!

But then the story changed...

Perhaps some bright "Spark" thought they could link their woes to the release of malware purporting to be nudie-picture viewers which would give the voyeurs out there a chance to see the pictures lifted from Apple's cloud service the week before.

So the story was changed. It's all because a few perverts are downloading the nudie-picture viewers that they've been infected with malware and *this* is what's crippling our network. Shame on you!

What a cunning plan... who could protest at a network outage when they think that it was caused by the porn on their PC?

Then Juha Saarinen came out with a suspicion that the outage was more likely to be a network vulnerability rather than just the effect of malware on a few hundred computers.

This is getting very interesting!

And now, as if to prove that Spark really still doesn't have a clue what's going on, the company has switched its story yet again and is now blaming 138 modems used by customers which, they claim, have been compromised and used to launch the attack that crippled its network.

Oh come on -- please!

What next? "Our routers were reflashed by aliens from the planet Dimbulb?"

So what have we learned from this situation?

Well perhaps the most obvious observation is that Telecom ^H^H^H^H^H Spark spends too much money on PR, brand and image consultants and far too little on tech-heads and building a good solid technology infrastructure.

Perhaps the company believes that all the money spent on highly-paid brand consultants and PR companies is an investment -- but how do they feel now that they've effectively pissed all that cash down the toilet because, based on the comments left all over the Net during the past few days, many of their customers are seriously considering jumping ship to a different ISP.

Here's a tip for Spark...

The *best* way to build your brand, your image and your reputation is to focus on core essentials and the delivery of a robust, reliable service that represents stunning value.

We don't give a toss about your fancy new logo or all the boozy "launchfests" you might have to lure intoxicated journos into writing nice things about you. All we want is an internet service that works, is affordable and can be relied on.

It's not rocket surgery!

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