Software update knocks NBN Co’s Sky Muster satellite service offline

Update 1:30pm AEDT: “Sky Muster services are now restored nationally after being impacted by a planned software update at approximately 4am,” an NBN Co spokesperson said.

“We apologise to all users who were impacted today. If people have not yet been able to reconnect to the network, we recommend they restart their equipment, or speak to their retail provider.”

NBN Co’s satellite service suffered a major outage this morning, the network operator has confirmed.

Retail service provider (RSP) SkyMesh early this morning advised customers of an “NBN-wide” outage of the Sky Muster satellite service.

In its latest update at 8.30am SkyMesh said that investigations by NBN Co had indicated that “some services are online” but “loss of service to all Sky Muster services are still occurring” with all of the satellite service’s gateways affected.

RSP Activ8me said that between 6am and 6.35am, beams connected to the Geraldton, Kalgoorlie and Waroona satellite earth stations (SESes) were affected. From 6.35am "all gateways nationwide to all beams" were affected, but from 7.15am the problem reverted back to affecting services delivered through the Geraldton, Kalgoorlie and Waroona SESes.

A core router restart between 6.35am and 7.15am was responsible for recovering the majority of gateways, according to the RSP

“Sky Muster services were impacted by a planned software update at approximately 4am this morning,” an NBN Co spokesperson said.

“Services are being restored nationally but we are aware of some end users who are still experiencing outages,” the spokesperson added.

“We are working closely with our satellite partners to get these services restored as quickly as we can and we apologise to all satellite end users who have been impacted by this outage.”

The Sky Muster I satellite launched in 2015; Sky Muster II launch a year later.

Like NBN Co's fixed wireless and fixed-line services, the satellite service debuted as a Layer 2 network service. However, NBN Co last year confirmed to Computerworld that it was shifting to a Layer 3 service to give it more flexibility in the kind of satellite products it could offer.

The first products to come out of the change will be 'Sky Muster Plus' services.

Sky Muster Plus will support burst speeds in excess of the current 25 megabits per second wholesale speed cap for NBN Co's satellite services.

In addition, households will be able to carry out a range of activities that won't count towards their data allowance. NBN Co has said that email, Internet banking, web browsing and critical software updates are examples of activities that won't be counted towards a user's monthly data quota.