The last few days have been troubled for users of UNITEL, the largest mobile operator in Angola. Multiple disruptions to services, causing large-scale disruptions.
UNITEL called a press conference to explain what is happening. Below is the press release, with a full explanation of the reported failures:
"Following an anomaly in the 3G network software, on the 17th of February, UNITEL's VOICE, SMS and DATA services experienced disturbances for more than 3 hours.
The disturbance led to the stoppage of transmission between the two central redundancy systems, thus affecting the services described above.
As soon as the situation was verified, mechanisms for mitigating the problem, with new software being presented by the supplier on the 3G network nodes, planned to be implemented from the 02nd of March. Meanwhile, a new incident was recorded on the 26th and 27th of February causing disturbances in the VOICE and SMS services but not effecting the DATA service. As informed on March 01st, no link was found between the two occurrences and due procedures were created for the issue to be resolved. However, and despite all the efforts made, the cause of this event has still not been found.
With the implementation of the software change as of March 02nd, an operation that required a physical presence in each of the 6 nodes of the 3G network, erratic behavior in the 3G network began to be observed, which led to new disruptions in the network significantly in the March 05th, yesterday the 10th and today the 11th.
At the moment, UNITEL's major suppliers on the 3G network are providing support so that the source can be found and the problem corrected. Despite being unlikely, given that UNITEL has a sufficiently secure network, the possibility of malicious action has not been ruled out for now.
The UNITEL team has been on high alert since the 17th of February. The main European supplier of central systems and the American supplier of transmission nodes are working together to find a solution. And some specialists are on their way to Luanda, so that the problem can be concluded in the coming days.
UNITEL has already implemented the compensation of 719.516 Customers, affected, of Plans + of 1,3 and 7 days and who were unable to use the minutes and SMS of the package, due to its expiry, when the network was disrupted. This compensation procedure will remain in effect until systems stability is restored."
