Swisscom and other operators: breakdowns week!

Swisscom’s mobile internet network has encountered problems at the national level for about half an hour on Wednesday. On the side of Sunrise UPC, the same day in the evening, some customers of the Plateau and Central Switzerland did not have an internet. And as we pointed out the day before the announcement of its prices, it was the fixed Internet of Salt which was disrupted on Sunday. But what’s going on?

Let’s start with Swisscom who continues to distinguish himself with his local dysfunctions, last week, or national, as this week! “This Wednesday Swisscom failure was caused by an unforeseen event that occurred during planned maintenance work, which was combined with a human error,” said Alicia Richon, spokesperson for our request the former monopoly.

Overheating a router at Sunrise (UPC)

Sunrise (UPC) was the most transparent. “Wednesday evening, Internet traffic via the HFC wired network was briefly limited, which may have had repercussions in certain parts of the plateau and central Switzerland. Only Internet connection via HFC connections has been affected. TV services and fixed telephony via HFC connections have not been affected and there has also not been restrictions for fiber optic or VDSL connections or for mobile connections, “said Rolf Ziebold .

“The cause was an overheated router who continued to operate, but which limited internet traffic. The router was immediately disconnected from the network so that redundancy solutions can take over from Internet traffic. The disturbance lasted approximately 45 minutes from 9:55 p.m. to 10:40 p.m., “said the spokesperson for the company based in Zurich and who has just signed his return to the Swiss Stock Exchange.

Salt little inspired in French -speaking Switzerland

Finally, I wanted to know what had happened at Salt on Sunday evening, since the fixed internet was interrupted about an hour. “We had a partial failure of a network element for less than an hour and geographically limited in French-speaking Switzerland,” said Ana Biljaka, spokesperson, also at our request.

These different explanations show that our communication networks remain fragile and at the mercy of human and material failures. Given the importance of information highways today, their reliability may quickly become a major marketing element.

When will there be a breakdowns?

If Swisscom’s failure has been largely publicized, Sunrise (UPC) and Salt have passed a bit between the drops, given the more limited character of their failures. In terms of mentalities, we see that even after a big breakdown, some have the overhang of increasing their prices. Imagine the widow who has to pay her husband’s mechanic’s invoice who forgot to tighten a wheel, forgetting at the origin of a fatal accident.

In this context, online tools like Alestörungen.ch permanently monitoring operators’ breakdowns are precious. Too bad they offer that one view limited to 24 hours. It would be interesting to have a longer -lasting photograph, including the accumulation of all breakdowns! That would be interesting and it would change us from the more or less tampered network tests!

Xavier Studer