Mobilink has managed to get its network back online, at least partially, after a fire broke out and damaged its main switching center in Islamabad yesterday evening.
In a communication with ProPakistani, Mr. Omar Manzoor, Director public relations at Mobilink, confirmed of the fire eruption in the company’s MSC in Islamabad, causing a major network outage, primarily in north region from 5 PM last evening to 5 AM this morning.
According to Mr. Omar, there was no loss of life and fire was controlled in early hours that mainly damaged the building.
From sources, we have learned that fire broke out in power room and damaged major portion of it. Due to early containment, telecom equipment remained safe with no notable harm to it.
He confirmed that network is back, partially, while the complete restoration and network normalization may take another two hours from now (its 12:30 PM at the time of filing of this report).
When asked about any estimates on monetary loss, Mr. Manzoor said that any evaluations are yet to happen. “Right now, company’s foremost priority is to get the network back’, he added.
Update (5:30 PM)
We just got following statement from Mobilink, which claims that network is fully restored.
Mobilink confirms the complete restoration of all services including voice, SMS and data connectivity that were affected due to a fire incident yesterday.
“All services have been restored and our customers should not be experiencing any difficulty in getting through to their loved ones. We sincerely regret any inconvenience caused to our valued customers,” said Omar Manzur, Director Public Relations, Mobilink.
Any customers continuing to experience difficulty may call our helpline 111 from their mobile or 111-300-300 from a landline.
Well done mobilink (Y)
my indigo restored early in morning.
Thank God. :) i rcvd a text from different NOs, as follwos:
“Mobilink Shut Down its Services across Pakistan more than 19 Hours. Even their landline Nos were NOT responding. Mobilink did NOT apologize to their more than 20 million customers, even by sending a single apology SMS. Mobilink must compensate for their negligence. PTA Should also take Notice.”
While trying not too sound too biased, i would like to mention a few things:
1. Natural Disaster, could have happened to anyone, any company, This is the first Major outage in Mobilink’s History, Please cut them some slack,Remember all the days that you DID have the service and never noticed it around.
2. Not everything can have Redundancy, even geographical, There are many technical reasons for that, i’ll give you a small example, One Sim is registered on one server, you cannot have two servers registering it cuz it causes a conflict, while it is ensured that nothing happens to that server, incase of a disaster like this, there is nothing you can do but to restore it.
3. There’s so many issues that are faced everyday but are dealt with on daily basis, none of them are noticed by the general customer cuz there’s redundancy and procedures define to ensure service. If something is just powered off by a fire, you cannot do much.
4. All technical staff of Islamabad more than 200 employees have been here in the building trying to restore everything since sunday evening, none of them have gone home. There’s ash, there’s acidic fumes that are hurting our eyes and our throats, there’s water on the floor with electric cables and extensions running on them, i’ve seen national managers and even CTO working around dragging cables to turn equipment back up. I can assure you, what they have already gotten working is an achievement, I would like to see if any other network operator in Pakistan recover within 18 hours after an incident like this. None of you are actually here and seeing the condition of what the fire left us with.
So please bare with us, while we work to bring our network back online. I can assure you we are more concerned than you are. For you its just a phonecall/sms/facebook , for us its our careers.
NICE! (Y)
You said just a phone call?
Imagine those people relying on the phone call that day for very very important tasks.
Not quite the first. One happened in 2003 or 2004 as well.
If technical staff was busy in restoring the network, where was public relations and customer services staff? Were they sleeping? Didn’t they have any responsibility to officially disclose on media what was the problem? Don’t blame on natural disasters. Earthquake of 2005 was also a natural disaster but our government didn’t go on hibernation till that disaster is tackled (like you guys did). By the way, do you really think it was “natural” disaster or you inability to secure your servers & infrastructure?
Hi,
I do agree that natural disaster can happen to anybody or any company. But what we expect is an update on public media to inform its users about this outage (At least an apology message on newspapers). I know thousand of North users who don’t know what is propakistani and from where to get an update what happened to their favourite mobilink SIM.
If Mobilink can spend hours on daily advertisement, I believe they can bear the cost of one notice/add in newspapers to keep its customers informed about this outage.
I have my indigo connection working. Blackberry working too. Good job!
allah .. 2000 rs wali post ..
Still No GPRS in Attock,Kamra and adjoining areas
Mobilink is working perfectly again. SMS are going and calls too. Love you mobilink. Allah her buri aafat say bachaye, ameen.
Yes, Mobilink is back in action!
Wish and pray for Mobilink’s success in the future, despite the damage, you brought our network back so quickly.
Thank you
Nice. Love you mobilink :P …
all the smses which were sent during the problem time has been deleted and u wont get them
well I got them all after the coverage was back, SMSC’s normally have that type of storage capability for 72 hours, so check again…
it.s 6.41 pm not working yet in hazro
i am not a mobilink subscriber but whatever the people may say mobilink has a better experience as compared to other cellular providers as they have been here for more than a decade(Don’t compare it to PTCL)… they have a better ability to cope with
such a crisis…
Its been working in Islamabad since morning…
hats off to Mobilink.!! My service is back online and working perfect now:D i kinda feel sad for what i can imagine would be hundreds of employees who most probably didnt even go home on sunday to get it all back on track so soon…
again..not to be biased. I have had serious problems with my indigo number even before this disaster, being with them was a disaster for me though. I had no signals in my area and Mobilink wouldnt accept it and would rather make me change settings in the mobile. After several days of complaints situation remained the same (the mobile would work as soon as I got out from my area). Then I opted to port out. That was another nightmare and a hair-pulling experience. I could not afford losing my business number. After getting ported out successfully, I was still getting billed. No one listened to the complaint as in their system my number was with Mobilink. It took me around 6 months and some French (abusive language) to make them realize that I could not be charged by 2 cellular operators for the same number. I ofter get promotion messages from Mobilink (I have ported out..remember..?)
Looks like they use independent databases for promotions. I had to get myself removed from individual systems like 555 and 5555 etc. To this day I still receive promotion messages from Mobilink… from their various systems
i think even if mobilink’s service got screwed up for sometime, i still can’t overlook the fact that the consistency in its high quality is simply marvelous! these one time accidents can happen. in any facet of life, so what if it happened to something so technical like cellular services… however, great job mobilink on getting the issue fixed in such a little time
Hello Maybelink,
Have you people heard of something called a Smoke Detector or a Fire Detector?
Your company has had 3 fires in rapid succession. Any company with a brain of a child would install these inexpensive devices to protect their equipment. This shows a complete lack of professionalism and commitment. Also shows a lack of insight on the part of the management.
Even if they had firefighting equipment on hand, the fire would not have caused so much damage.
ALSO NOTE:
FIRES ARE NOT NATURAL DISASTERS.
@Salman,
3 Fires in short difference, specially on weekends, my guess is that this has human intervention in it, corporation of such sizes with billion of $ invested, does not overlook such small things like smoke/fire detectors…. Something fishy is going on that we dunno about…. What are your thoughts people.
Hello Salman two!
By the way, which ‘perfect unharmed world’ are you living in, eh? Everyone of us have heard about fire detectors and safety precationary measures yet even when man goes beyond its limit to prevent itself from accidents, they still HAPPEN.
Deal with it, bro…if that was not the case, there was never no unwanted pregnancy, the dearest Titanic would never have sunk, no satellite would have ever exploded in the sky, no plane and no train would have ever crashed and derailed.
Accidents happen bro and thats why they are called accidents and fire is one of the natural elements to cause that accident.
So, take a chill pill and lets not preach what preventive stuff is! :D
Oh and BTW…Mobilink is working awesomely well since yesterday (2pm). My blackberry is super, data, voice, and sms all going and being recieved so ROCK ON, Mobilink!!!
Mobilink services are back in almost all places. Pindi and Isloo are back in action!
love Mobilink and I will always love Mobilink. I had no services yesterday but now my phone is working fine. Mobilink you are the best. Yaaaaay! J
We should appreciate the efforts put in by Mobilink to restore the service on war footing basis…. Hats off to Mobilink….
They also apologized in today’s newspapers
i agree with ali shah.. they ACTUALLY APOLOGIZED to its users. issues like these come up in the cellular industry every now and then. anyways, it’s all fixed now so yeah.. hats off to mobilink! and Thank God there weren’t any casualties..
Yes, good point to be noted..
They apologized in today’s newspapers!
Its back and running, i don’t know why people are still making this a big fuss..
it’s toootally fixed now!!!! :))
calls, smses anddd the blackberry services! thank you mobilink for fixing it in such a little time. we LOVE you!!
ab tou BILKUL fix ho gya hai.. not partially!! ;)
Mine is fully back and running perfect! :D
WOW …. Maybelink is back … if you need a better connection, look elsewhere … you wont get it with Maybelink.
If there was fire/smoke detectors and proper fire handling procedures in place, this should NOT happen.
The people in Maybelink and Maybe the people in this thread have never worked in an international organization or dont have enough exposure about “QOS”.
If I was the boss of Maybelink, I would fire the person responsible for the fire handling procedures …. OH WAIT …. since there was no fire handling procedures … there is nooone to fire.
Accountability is the basis for QOS.
I have been told by inside sources that it was a Huawei technician whose carelessness or in-experience-ness caused the fire (Huawei being the vendor for Mobilink’s CORE Network).
More than anything, this should open the eyes of the Chinese vendors, who treat that employees very badly and try to kick them out of the company after 2-3 years as the employees start expecting respect and higher salary after working for 2-3 years.
So instead of giving them this, Chinese employers kick them out and hire new in-experiences persons at very low salary.
This fire and the ensuing loss was a direct result of Chinese Employees HR policies.
sir,
I have called many times to helpline that their is sms sending problem, he said that their is no problem in service your handset have any problem you should restart you handset after deleting sent and out box sms. I did this and changed hand set but all in vain.
so i request to you if you can’t resolve problem them why you misguide the customer????
plz resolve my problem or tell me so that i can use or port it to any other network
03006397047 that is mine number