A significant number of Chunghwa Telecom 4G service subscribers experienced a service disruption yesterday morning due to a bug in a software upgrade, the nation’s largest telecom said.
The telecom’s subscribers nationwide reported various abnormalities with their 4G service yesterday morning, with some reporting a poor 4G signal reception.
Some said their mobile phones switched exclusively to the 3G network, while others said that they had no 4G service between 3am and 10am.
The company said the problem began at about midnight, when engineers found a bug in core 4G network infrastructure during a software upgrade. They “quarantined” the affected machine at 9am and managed to resume normal operations by about 12:30pm, the telecom said.
The company said that 2G and 3G network services functioned normally while engineers tackled the problem with the 4G network.
National Communications Commission Telecommunications Administration Department Deputy Director Liang Wen-hsing (梁溫馨) said the company has four mobility management entities, which allowed the company to switch traffic processed by the system with the bug to those that were not affected.
Subscribers affected by the incident mainly live in areas of northern Hsinchu County, Liang said, adding that isolated signal abnormalities were also reported in other parts of the nation.
It was not the first time that the carrier’s 4G service subscribers have reported service disruptions due to a system upgrade.
In May last year, 4G subscribers were unable to make telephone calls or go online for about two hours.
The company’s standardized service contract states that customers unable to access the 4G network for two to six hours are to receive a 5 percent reduction from their monthly bill, while those unable to access the network for six to eight hours or eight to 12 hours are to receive discounts of 8 percent and 10 percent respectively.
Subscribers who are unable to use the service for more than 12 hours, but less than 24, are to receive a 20 percent reduction from their monthly bill.
As of press time last night, the company has yet to ascertain the number of users affected by the outage.
The commission said that it has asked the telecom to identify the root cause of the problem and submit a report, adding that the company should identify the area and exact number of users affected by the service disruption and compensate them based on the terms of its service contract.
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