DTAC's Cellular Network Crashed

[webfact]

DTAC

DTAC's cellular network crashed

The Nation

Total Access Communication's cellular network crashed briefly yesterday afternoon, prompting reports of dead voice and data services in key areas such as Greater Bangkok and some provinces.

The problem appeared to have started at 2pm.

Darmp Sukontasap, chief corporate affairs officer for DTAC, when contacted by the press apologised for the inconvenience, saying the network was being fine tuned, which might affect some, but not all customers.

The situation appeared to return to normal at 3pm.

No statement had come out of DTAC to explain the problem, but it might involve the company's network swap project.

DTAC has been replacing its conventional cellular network nationwide with a new one since March. The project is expected to be completed next year. The move is aimed at boosting its service capacity and quality.

Settapong Malisuwan, chairman of the telecom committee of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, said that early next year the committee would form a panel to monitor the service quality specifically for the existing 3G service.

Three cellular operators are providing 3G cellular service on their existing 2G bands - Advanced Info Service on 900MHz and Real Move and DTAC on 850MHz.

-- The Nation 2011-12-22

[lothda]

Very clever to do this in the easy mid-afternoon rather than in the busy early morning hours

[alant]

Didn't notice anything but then again if you live in ChiangMai DTAC and 3G are simply a fairytale. Have thought of moving to true or A I S who's 3G service includes ChiangMai but little else so why bother :-)

[beano2274]

Noticed it, my wife's phone (DTAC) was permanently engaged when I used my mobile (AIS) to call her, but if I used a landline to her mobile it worked okay. Still was not working late last night, checked this morning at 6.30 everything working fine again.

In other countries around the world all engineering work that will have an effect on customers is carried out at night time, to save them from disruptions

[whybother]

I didn't have any problem in the afternoon, but in the evening I couldn't make phone calls, but could still get data. (I usually get Edge, but could only get GPRS.)

[2unique]

2 to 3pm you wish! I landed at Suvarnabhumi at 11 and from the taxi into Bangkok I had no service on phone or tablet. Finally in the evening i had 3g on my tablet but phone service was coming and going. Checked at 3am (had to call Mexico) and still no service. 6am was the first I noticed a phone signal.

[phiphidon]

Noticed it, my wife's phone (DTAC) was permanently engaged when I used my mobile (AIS) to call her, but if I used a landline to her mobile it worked okay. Still was not working late last night, checked this morning at 6.30 everything working fine again.

In other countries around the world all engineering work that will have an effect on customers is carried out at night time, to save them from disruptions

In other parts of the world this is not necessarily true, it was given the euphemism "unplanned maintenance" that had to be done immediately and was "sold" as such to the users. This probably wasn't the result of engineering work but was simply a failure of the network.

[Suradit69]

The problem appeared to have started at 2pm.

Late morning in Pattaya when I called a friend living east of Sukhumvit who uses DTAC I kept getting busy tone using either my AIS or landline, but he could call me.

Edited December 22, 2011 by Suradit69

[draftvader]

My phone "died" at 11:00 in CentralWorld, this made me think that it couldn't be a downed cell as that area will have PLENTY of overlapping redundancy. Thinking it might be my phone/SIM card I came home to Bangplad at 13:00, went to the DTAC outlet in Tesco Bangplad and asked them what was wrong with my phone/SIM/network. They were a little unclear and suggested I contacted the service centre in Central PinKlao. I arrived in Central at 14:00 found the service centre overflowing with people experiencing the same issue. The end result was that the service came back at 16:00, only to drop out again from 19:30 to 21:00.

My wife's number, which is 6,669 separated from mine was fine all day (suggesting that this was not a number bank issue, but a corrupted and badly organised database issue). I guess there might have been more outages throughout the night, but I was mostly upset that they didn't update their website whilst this was going on. I checked the website for information at 13:00 and promptly wasted the next 3 hours trying to gain useful information. Surely they should, if they care about their customers, publish pertinent information like this on their website to allow their customers to understand the situation and deal with it, rather than having us waste our time?

Of course, as alluded to by a number of TV posters, they should really have performed this task at 2am on Sunday morning when the traffic is "less vital" and they had another 7 hours to deal with errors. This is why I start my customer website database updates at 9am local time (2am-3am GMT). This allows me to "roll-back" if there are any problems, ensuring that their business day is unaffected.

Oh well, what do I know? T.I.T. and I'm just from "another" country that has poorer education than here I should obviously learn from this advanced customer service methodology/project planning.

[mrgreg]

My phone was dead from 11.40AM to 6.30PM. I also tried to call other Dtac numbers from a public phone but the lines were dead as well.

Maintenance is just an excuse. It is definitely a technical failure, otherwise why not do the maintenance work from 2AM to 4AM and why not sending a text messenger to inform their clients and apologies for the inconvenience?

Regularly I get complains from friends and clients that they cannot reach me even though I am expecting their call and my phone is on my desk in front of me. The phone simply will not ring and I don't receive misscalls either. Few weeks ago Dtac told me "the engineer is working on it". Well, whatever, if no change by the end of january, I'll change provider.

[Maeklong]

Last night around 21:00 I couldn't call any of my family members (all DTAC) phones from Chumphon, since dialing just cut out after it was started.

But they could call me from Samutsongkhram...so the effects were spread out.

[beano2274]

Noticed it, my wife's phone (DTAC) was permanently engaged when I used my mobile (AIS) to call her, but if I used a landline to her mobile it worked okay. Still was not working late last night, checked this morning at 6.30 everything working fine again.

In other countries around the world all engineering work that will have an effect on customers is carried out at night time, to save them from disruptions

In other parts of the world this is not necessarily true, it was given the euphemism "unplanned maintenance" that had to be done immediately and was "sold" as such to the users. This probably wasn't the result of engineering work but was simply a failure of the network.

I worked in am NMC for many years, planned maintenance was carried out at night time. This work had been planned months ago, and should have been done at night. Emergency work has to be done immediately, and could involve customer disruption.

My NMC experience is with wireline communications.

Note added - this was a change in the network from NSN to Ericssons equipment

Edited December 22, 2011 by beano2274

[vahack]

whatever, if no change by the end of january, I'll change provider.

well hey at least thats easy here in Thailand. in the US you get locked in to multi-year contracts. i have switched from True to AIS to DTAC this year. also have CAT for Internet. i guess i am a well rounded cell customer lol

[4evermaat]

Last night around 21:00 I couldn't call any of my family members (all DTAC) phones from Chumphon, since dialing just cut out after it was started.

But they could call me from Samutsongkhram...so the effects were spread out.

Same here. I finally called AIS customer service and they advised of the problem. I think it is cleared up now, though.

[Yme]

>>Settapong Malisuwan, chairman of the telecom committee of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, said that early next year the committee would form a panel to monitor the service quality specifically for the existing 3G service.<<

No doubt a large office with lots of storage space and a staff of 2 to handle the complaints. 3G is woeful in Thailand and seems to be getting worse. Regularly seeing u/l and d/l speeds in the single digit range and often below 1.0 kbps. Signal drop-outs from five bars of strength to 2 bars of Edge coverage all day.

Not that any of this is taken into account for speed shaping once the monthly allocation is utilized.

If I'm being charged for 5Gbytes of 3G data then I expect to get 5Gbytes at 3G speed and 0.67kbps d/l or u/l is not 3G anywhere else int he world except Thailand.

[webfact]

DTAC to Compensate for Signal Failure

The second largest mobile phone operator will be compensating its clients for a system failure on Wednesday.

Its executive says the failure stemmed from the transfer of its database to a new system to upgrade the firm's services.

Darm Sukhontasap, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Total Access Communication or DTAC, today held a press conference to apologize for a system failure which happened yesterday from 11.30 AM to 1.30 PM and from 5.30 PM to 6.30 PM.

Darm said the incident resulted from the company's system renovation and technical migration of its database to a new system as part of its telecommunication upgrade plan.

The upgrade came about as the company expands its data service due to the increasing demand for internet use on handsets.

The executive remarked a technical interruption occurred during the relocation of its database to its newly-implemented Home Location Register system, bringing about problems when its clients make or pick up calls.

He also blamed the failure on the heavy traffic of phone calls which he said stemmed from clients' excessive redialing.

He said the firm has already addressed the problem and it has resolved not to bill clients both in the pre-paid and post-paid systems for calls, short messages and data transfers made between noon yesterday and noon tomorrow.

Darm said the company will later estimate how much its service charge exemption costs.

He accepted yesterday's system failure hurt the confidence of clients in the company's services, but maintained the problem has nothing to do with the existing 3G service.

The company's Senior Director on network operating system Pratet Tankuranant said his firm has already halted its database migration until the problem is clearly identified.

He pledged the firm will try every way to prevent a recurrence of such a signal failure particularly during the New Year holiday when mobile phone communication is expected to increase.

Executives of DTAC also met the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission to clarify yesterday's incident.

Information and Communication Technology Minister Anudit Nakhonthap said he will invite all mobile phone operators for a meeting next week to seek ways to prevent such a system failure in the future.

-- Tan Network 2011-12-22

[wxyz]

whatever, if no change by the end of january, I'll change provider.

well hey at least thats easy here in Thailand. in the US you get locked in to multi-year contracts. i have switched from True to AIS to DTAC this year. also have CAT for Internet. i guess i am a well rounded cell customer lol

any recommendation?

[phiphidon]

Noticed it, my wife's phone (DTAC) was permanently engaged when I used my mobile (AIS) to call her, but if I used a landline to her mobile it worked okay. Still was not working late last night, checked this morning at 6.30 everything working fine again.

In other countries around the world all engineering work that will have an effect on customers is carried out at night time, to save them from disruptions

In other parts of the world this is not necessarily true, it was given the euphemism "unplanned maintenance" that had to be done immediately and was "sold" as such to the users. This probably wasn't the result of engineering work but was simply a failure of the network.

I worked in am NMC for many years, planned maintenance was carried out at night time. This work had been planned months ago, and should have been done at night. Emergency work has to be done immediately, and could involve customer disruption.

My NMC experience is with wireline communications.

Note added - this was a change in the network from NSN to Ericssons equipment

You missed my gist - I also worked in the biz - when it all went terribly wrong the customer was told it was "unplanned maintenance"