Internet fault causes widespread disruption

Telecommunications group Melita yesterday decided to give customers unlimited internet downloads free of charge for the next month as compensation for a six-hour internet cut caused by a technical fault.

"This is the first time a local communications provider is offering compensation for a technical outage. It's our way of saying thank you and sorry," a company spokesman said.

The breakdown, which developed at 8.35 a.m., stemmed from a fault with the Italian telecom giant Wind, from which Melita sources its international connectivity.

The fault led to the disruption of Melita's international phone, data and internet services but all systems were restored by 3 p.m. Local mobile telephony was unaffected but international mobile voice traffic was out for about an hour until it was directed to a different provider and restored.

The fault also affected websites hosted by Melita, with overseas sites going offline altogether and locally-hosted sites and mail servers only available at slower speeds.

The company's compensation pledge was announced after scores of people complained they had lost a lot of money because their businesses had ground to a standstill. Melita's customer care call centre received about 10,000 calls during the loss of service.

Despite the offer of unlimited downloads, some businessmen said the inconvenience caused was much bigger than the value of the compensation.

"Internet doesn't cost much but having a business with idle staff and no internet costs a lot. In monetary terms, the compensation is negligible," importer David Stellini said.

The outage sparked the usual war of words between Melita and the more established telecoms providers Go and Vodafone.

Melita said proposals for an agreement between telecoms companies to back up each other during such an outage were being delayed by the other main operators.

But Go and Vodafone both denied Melita's claims, saying that talks on a redundancy agreement, as it is known, were ongoing. Go added that it immediately asked Melita whether it needed help yesterday and Vodafone pointed out that Melita never called for assistance.

Later in the day, Melita said that by the time Go could have helped Melita's systems were already up and running.

A spokesman for Melita added that an official integrated policy was essential because in such instances the negotiation processes could take longer than it took to restore the faults.

CEO Stephen Wright said Melita was working closely with the Malta Communications Authority to ensure that such a situation would be avoided in the future.

The MCA said the fault experienced was the result of a software failure that not only affected operative equipment but also redundant equipment intended to come into operation in the event of equipment failure.

cperegin@timesofmalta.com