Tenfold increase in phone network outages, Comreg finds

New figures published by ComReg show over 50.7 million user hours were lost due to various incidents which affected phone networks in 2020. Picture: Kevin Clancy / GreenGraph.

The State’s telecom watchdog has blamed IT problems together with poor staff supervision and training as the major reasons behind an almost tenfold increase in the loss of fixed and mobile phone services to customers last year.

New figures published by ComReg show over 50.7 million user hours were lost due to various incidents which affected phone networks in 2020.

It compared with approximately 5.5 million user hours lost the previous year.

ComReg said it had been notified of 17 serious incidents last year which resulted in the loss of services compared to 11 in 2019.

The regulator said the main cause of network problems were software bugs, poorly implemented software updates and hardware failures.

“The number of hours lost to each outage was commonly compounded by policy and procedural flaws,” it added.

ComReg said such problems often arose from inadequate or a lack of standard operating procedures.

“These incidents typically arose during network changes where poor supervision and training of staff and contractors were also notable factors." 

However, the regulator did not identify which telecom operators were worst affected by incidents last year.

It claimed several of the reported incidents were linked to power outages which were usually as a result of storms.

Storms

ComReg said three out of the seven major storms which affected Ireland last year — Brendan, Ciara, and Dennis — resulted in major outages which led to almost 1.5 million lost user hours — up from 600,000 lost hours in 2019.

In contrast, networks operated normally during storms Ellen, Francis, Jorge, and Aiden.

All telecom firms which experience a significant breach of security or service are obliged to notify ComReg of the incident.

The regulator must be informed of any incident which reaches a certain threshold in relation to its impact on the number of customers affected and duration.

They range from 15% of users being affected by over one hour to incidents where 1% of users are affected for in excess of eight hours.

ComReg said typical incidents are caused by weather and natural phenomena including storms, high temperatures, fog, snow and solar storms as well as power outages and system failures.

Other causes include malicious acts such as theft, vandalism, sabotage and denial of service as well as third party damage such as car accidents, cable damage and deep-diving submarines.

The regulator said mobile and radio networks were more prone to the effects of adverse weather, while fixed underground networks were generally at risk from flooding.

ComReg said it has been engaged in an assessment of the risk management practices of operators of public communications networks and services since late 2019.

The regulator said it was “a complex multi-year project” which in the last two years had examined fixed and mobile voice and data services.

It is also due to start work on developing a model to estimate the economic and societal cost of a network incident as it claimed the issue had taken on added importance due to the increase in remote working during the Covid-19 pandemic.