At 7.00AM this morning, Celcom suffered a network outage that affected incoming and outgoing calls nationwide. MVNOs and RAN-sharing partners dependent on Celcom’s network–TuneTalk, Red ONE and webe also faced disruptions.
*UPDATED* with additional statements from Celcom.
In an official statement, Celcom blamed the outage on a “troubled network upgrade.” Its tech team fixed the issue at 9.30AM in Peninsular Malaysia, and other regions will recover gradually by 1PM.
Celcom’s last major outage was in late April where it affected internet data for social networks like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.
The blue telco is in the process of upgrading their network, to deliver up to 400Mbps on LTE Advanced (LTE-A). Last year, it said it would be allocating MYR2 billion into its network upgrade exercise, across five years.
UPDATE:
“We regret this inconvenience from the bottom of our hearts and we hope our customers will continue to support us,” said Azwan Khan Osman Khan, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Business Operations.
“We apologise that the system upgrade today was not as seamless as anticipated, however, our technical teams had restored the system to a normal state as at 2.00pm on the same day nationwide,” he said.
Azwan noted that the technical glitches were detected as Celcom was conducting upgrades to migrate from 60Gbps to 100Gbps on its technology partner’s platform.
The migration had encountered serious engineering challenges with a sudden surge of traffic outflow, resulting in a severe congestion to some of Celcom’s nodes in Subang HiTech and Kepong.
The upgrades will prepare the telco for 4.5G and eventually future 5G. It recently ran 5G tests with Ericsson Malaysia.
If you’re on TuneTalk or red One, two local MVNO’s running on Celcom’s network, you may have experienced disruptions to your outgoing and incoming voice calls.
Webe, which has a RAN-sharing or domestic roaming partnership with Celcom, was also affected by the outage. Subscribers may have faced difficulties receiving or making calls, as well as data on 2G/3G.
Did you face or are you still experiencing interruptions to your mobile services?
Source: Celcom via Soyacincau
