Africa-Press – Angola. UNITEL announced, this Friday (11), the compensation of 719,516 customers harmed by communications disruptions on at least six occasions, between February 17 and March 11, when the network presented “erratic behavior” that the company admits. can be attributed to “malicious action”.
The information was provided by the operator’s director general, Miguel Geraldes, during a press conference held to address the interruptions in voice and SMS telecommunications that occurred during that period and to announce investigations into the problem initiated by European and North American providers.
“There is a perception that UNITEL was the target of a hacker attack, as is common nowadays, but I can assure you that we are not aware that it could exist. Despite the fact that the long time to identify the origin (11 days) , we cannot rule out the existence of a malicious act.
Miguel Geraldes recalled that the anomalies started on 17 February, with greater incidence in the center of Luanda, municipality of Belas (Benfica and Talatona), as well as in the centers of the provinces of Benguela and Cuanza-Sul, with Voice, SMS and Data recorded disturbances for three hours, but problems continued for 11 days.
The official said that UNITEL’s management had activated all mechanisms to mitigate the problem, with the supplier having replaced the software supporting the six nodes of the 3G network, on 2 March. However, disturbances occurred again, especially in the Voice and SMS on the 26th and 27th of February, when data services remained intact.
Miguel Geraldes held a meeting with the management of the National Institute of Telecommunications (INACOM), as the regulatory body, having clarified that “there is no connection between what happened on the 17th and what happened on the 26th and 27th of February”, very although the causes are yet to be determined.
“What we are going to do is allow customers to be compensated for the days they were unable to use the plans they purchased. For us, financial losses are not the most important element, as we are concerned with providing quality services to our customers, in a that we started to reward those who were affected on the 2nd of March until the situation was overcome”, he said.
The installation of the new software, stressed the general manager, took place without incidents, being an operation that had on-site monitoring by technical teams in each of the six years of the 3G network, but erratic behaviors with the same characteristics were again observed in the Saturday 5th, Tuesday 8th and Thursday.
He assured that “UNITEL has its two largest suppliers involved in this task, that is, a European entity that is the world leader in the 3G radio sector and the North American supplier of transmission nodes for our network”.
According to the official, “the teams are engaged in current work 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, we still cannot identify the origin of what is happening..
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