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Vodafone customers face service interruption after break in

by Scott Bicheno on 28 February 2011, 11:39

Tags: Vodafone (LON:VOD)

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Entering and breaking

Mobile operator Vodafone has experienced a break in at one of its technical facilities, believed to be in Basingstoke. But the real damage done during the break in was to some equipment, resulting in the loss of both voice and data services to Vodafone customers.

There's not a lot more info right now, but here's the official line from Vodafone:

We had a break in last night at one of our technical facilities which resulted in damage done to some of our equipment. This means that some customers may be experiencing temporary loss of voice, sms and internet services. We are working quickly to restore these and will be back to normal as soon as we can. There has been no impact on the privacy of customers' data.

You have to wonder what the motives of the burglars were. If they were just looking for some loot, why were they anywhere near critical technical equipment, let alone damaging it so severely that it takes down the network? That begs the question of whether there was industrial espionage or sabotage involved.

This also asks profound questions of not just Vodafone's security, but its apparent reliance on one site for the provision of its service to however many customers have been affected by this. Surely its network should be sufficiently robust to be able to withstand some incidental damage from a break in.

 

UPDATE - We've just received an update from Vodafone that voice services have now been restored, but that SMS and data are still a work in progress. This has apparently affected a few hundred thousand of its 19 million UK customers.

 



HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

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Ex-employee that was pissed is my guess. A bit too serious if it was just collateral damage from a burglary.

God knows what would Vodafone do if they burnt the place down as it seems if they have no sort of real back-up in place for this situation.
Maybe it was a copper theft? That would cause severe damage if all they did was rip the cables out without disconnecting them?
We got all of our Voda users down :(

400 pissed off peeps with no email access isn't very good start of Monday morning..
Everyone at my work is down :(
When I worked at another phone company our MSC (Mobile Switching Center) sites were pairs so if one went down the sister site could take over. All the MSCs and HLRs (Home location registers), constantly updated in a master/slave configuration. This however does increase costs and reduce capacity, so I wonder if they didn't have hot standbys.