The boss of DTAC, Thailand’s number two telco, has apologized after the firm experienced its third massive network outage in as many weeks.

 

Chief executive Jon Eddy Abdullah issued the apology at a press conference called to convince the public that the outages were all down to improbable odds rather than mismanagement or incompetence. The event was organized amid falling public confidence and the prospect of an enquiry by Thailand’s regulator.

 

The trouble started when DTAC’s entire network collapsed on 21 December because of a technical issue with the migration of the HLR from one database to another. The migration was part of a two-year network modernization plan signed off with Ericsson to replace the 18-year old 2G radio and backhaul network with a modern one ready for 3G or LTE.

 

Abdullah said his technical people and Ericsson’s are now confident that they understand the root cause of the outage.

 

On 5 January, a switch in the South of Thailand failed, but what usually takes five minutes to restart took hours because of the HLR migration. The problem spread nationwide when a parameter change aimed at helping users come back online faster inadvertently knocked iPhone 4 users off the network.

 

Abdullah has ordered a doubling of HLR database capacity before further migration takes place, which is expected to take six weeks.

 

On 8 January in the latest major network crash, a car accident severed one of two redundant fiber cables to the South and two minutes later, a bush fire cut the other cable. DTAC plans to build triple redundancy into critical network paths from now on.

 

Abdullah said that the chances of this happening were down to unbelievably bad luck and ruled out sabotage. “There are easier ways to cut a fiber optic cable,” he pointed out.