Hardware fault knocks out Gibtelecom mobiles

Gibtelecom mobile phone lines were down for two hours yesterday due to an ‘unexpected hardware fault’.

The telecommunications company apologised for the interruption, which left customers unable to make or receive any mobile phone calls.

All other Gibtelecom services were unaffected and the mobile voice services were fully restored just before 1pm.

“Whilst conducting routine maintenance on backup mobile equipment, an unexpected hardware fault developed which cascaded into Gibtelecom’s live mobile systems. This resulted in a loss of local mobile voice services for the duration of the outage,” a Gibtelecom press statement explained.

Gibtelecom notified customers via social media stating that their engineers were working to resolve the issue.

“We apologise to those customers who have experienced problems with their mobile voice services today,” said Gibtelecom’s Technology Director Jansen Reyes.

“All our equipment is fully resilient, having multiple backup systems in place. In the events leading up to today’s unprecedented interruption, our engineers were following ratified maintenance protocols on secondary mobile equipment. These types of routine procedures are common practise and form part of Gibtelecom’s standard operations and maintenance schedule. In consultation with the equipment manufacturers, we are carrying out an analysis into today’s events to identify the root cause.”