Thailand’s number two telco has suffered yet another network outage, its fifth so far in the space of a year, that left 20 percent of its subscribers without connectivity on Tuesday.
Dtac said that the outage was due to the failure of an MPLS router in one of its switching centres and that the total downtime was 65 minutes, (11.06 to 11.26 am and 12.00 noon to 12.45 pm).
However, that explanation and an apology by CEO Jon Eddy Abdullah offering free airtime or Internet access to anyone affected has not placated the regulator.
The national broadcasting and telecommunications commission’s secretary-general Takorn Tanatasit said that since this is the fifth outage in the space of a year, the NBTC will be fining Dtac heavily, at least $640,000 to $960,000 (20 to 30 million baht). A separate legal panel has been set up to investigate what other charges can be brought against Dtac and will report back within ten days.
The NBTC will also be sharing information with consumer protection agencies to help them bring separate cases against the telco. Dtac has around 24 million subscribers.
Dtac is in the middle of a two-year $1.3 billion network uplift plan that is a total rip and replace of legacy equipment to allow it to roll out nationwide 3G by the end of next year.
In June of this year, Dtac was the launch customer of SAP Sybase 365’s IP Exchange that allowed it to unify voice, data, roaming data and Blackberry all over a single international MPLS network.