Rising data loads and ambitious migration programs are putting unprecedented strain on wireless networks, with Orange France, O2 UK and T-Mobile USA suffering the consequences in the past week
The underlying causes are often found to be linked to core network elements which are coming under massive stress from data or signalling burdens. France Telecom insisted its Orange unit’s networks have plenty of capacity, saying its ‘monster outage’ on Friday was down to problems with the home location register (HLR), the database of customer connections which is essential for originating and delivering calls. About 28m subscribers were unable to call or text from Friday evening until Saturday afternoon.
But faults in any links in the chain usually point at overload, and the French government pledged to support an audit of all the cellcos’ networks to guard against recurrences. The incident has played into the new administration’s hands, since local analysts say it is already pressurizing regulator Arcep to place less emphasis on competition and more on preserving jobs. This year, the introduction of a fourth mobile operator, Free Mobile, has caused an aggressive price war and led the three main carriers to announce cost cuts and job losses. Some Orange sources implied these cuts would weaken network quality and reliability.
“Orange apologises to all of its customers for the consequences of this serious incident and is working to compensate them,” the company said in a statement, offering a day’s worth of free connection, or additional data download allowances. CEO Stephane Richard said the operator’s two vendors, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent, were helping to investigate the causes. ALU was the supplier of the new generation HLR.
Richard told an emergency press conference that the problems had not been related to any cyberattack, nor to Orange’s roaming agreement with Free Mobile, whose low cost plans have been blamed by some for overloading the incumbent’s systems. “There’s no capacity problem on the Orange network,” Richard insisted.
Also blaming problems with the HLR was Telefonica’s O2 UK unit, which suffered an outage on Wednesday and Thursday this week which left thousands of users cut off, or with sporadic services. MVNOs like GiffGaff and Tesco Mobile were also affected. This was O2’s second such problem, after a full day last month when customers could not send text messages. The website also crashed because of the weight of customer enquiries, indicating some of the lateral effects of the data storm ‘ not just requiring increased network infrastructure and core network capabilities, but also a new approach to customer support in the increasingly likely event of outages.
A week earlier, T-Mobile USA had suffered intermittent data outages in various parts of the country. Service was restored within a couple of hours, but many observers suggested the problems had been caused by the start of TMo’s complex network migration program. It is refarming major elements of its GSM spectrum for HSPA+, while migrating its current HSPA systems, in the AWS band, to LTE. That process starts this month with about 2,500 cell sites due to be updated.
Last year, Verizon Wireless and NTT DoCoMo were among the LTE early movers which endured major network failures because of signalling storms.