Anybody know when Voda signal will be back up?

TwistedPsycho

Most of the UK will have users experiencing issues, although the South is the hardest hit.

What I understand has happened is that the building housing one of their Home Location Register's in Basingstoke was broken into overnight and the damage has taken Vodafone all but offline (at least on the south side of the M4).

A Home Location Register (as far as my knowledge goes) is the master database that lists all the sim card numbers of all the devices able to use the Vodafone network. As you move around the country, each mast you connect to talks to the HLR to tell it where you are to gain authenticity to use the network and route calls to and from you

A messege on their forums, which disappeared rather quickly (I can say I saw it though and was posted by one of their moderation staff who generally issues fault alerts) said that they were deeming this a Major Outage and that there was NO estimate for rectification.

Saying that, I have noticed a few occasions this morning where I have had connected to Vodafone for a few moments then gone again.

Question is, why is there no redundant backup for such an important piece of kit?

nickmack

TwistedPsycho wrote: »

Question is, why is there no redundant backup for such an important piece of kit?

Failure to recognise this as a single point of failure? Bad disaster recovery planning? Cost? None of these are acceptable.

Also, how was physical access gained in order to cause this vandalism?

I think there's more to this. Vodafone were quick to dismiss any sensitive data being stolen, but do they really know?

The vandalism could have been a distraction for the real crime, which could have been hacking into the network or theft of customer details.

TwistedPsycho

Not working too far from Basingstoke in an infrastructure based environment I wonder if the "cable fairies" that have been giving us the runaround recently have taken a 1 junction trip down the M3.....

Here they were just content trying to sever a 25Kv Cable with a consumer level axe; they even left a brand new (still in the wrapper) cheap hacksaw from a well known DIY chain behind.... How they did not kill themselves is amazing.

TwistedPsycho

Some services are starting to restore, so hopefully this will be filtering down the line as they manage to fix things.

[Deleted User]

Don't want to sound cynical but I had a spam message sent to my account purporting to be from Vodafone this morning (via SMS). Am I being an ultra conspiracy theorist by suggesting they might be connected?

Given that this particular spam seems to have been targeted ONLY at vodafone customers I'm confused as to how the scammers seem to have got hold of vodafone customers' details only.

TwistedPsycho

I doubt they are connected. The chances that a scammer would resort to breaking into an HLR to steal customer data are highly remote as there would be more comprehensive methods available, like offer Talk Talk a wad of money (who seem to have an expenentially large list of contract customer details)

I take you have phoned Vodafone who have decreed that they did not contact you?

[Deleted User]

TwistedPsycho wrote: »

I take you have phoned Vodafone who have decreed that they did not contact you?

Can't get through sadly! Will try again later!

TwistedPsycho

cheeryoleary wrote: »

Anyone drafted a sample letter asking for compensation for the downtime? Gotta be worth a couple of quid.

I doubt you will get anywhere unless you can prove that Vodafone were neglegent in any way by allowing undue access to their premises or have otherwise not planned for this contingency.

I still find it strange that they had no back-up in place to cut in and take over, however we might find that they did, but for some reason ti failed.

These things happen.....

TwistedPsycho

Deleted_User wrote: »

Can't get through sadly! Will try again later!

Probably still dealing with the compensation culture of customers who never dealt with Orange in its earlier years......

movilogo

Down in Beds/Bucks/Herts! Shame their website issued nothing about it. What a rubbish service.

Problems do happen, but how a company handles it shows their true potential.