State owned telecommunications company Zamtel has announced that it will allow its customers to make free Zamtel to Zamtel calls from Saturday 22:00 Hours to Sunday 12 Hours.
This was after the company suffered a major service outage at about 02:30 Hours on Friday which disrupted its mobile voice and mobile data services countrywide.
Zamtel Chief Executive Officer Sydney Mupeta announced in a statement that the outage was caused by a power surge that affected our central equipment site located at Lamya House in Lusaka.
“The power problem was resolved within two hours after the failure, however, the surge had caused serious damage to critical equipment including our Home Location Register (HLR) that hosts customer information. As a result of this, our customers were unable to make calls and use mobile internet,” Mr Mupeta said.
He said the restoration of the damaged equipment required rebuilding the entire HLR system, a process which is meticulous and time consuming adding this resulted in the prolonged outage that was experienced.
“To avoid reoccurrence, Zamtel is accelerating the implementation of the second HLR system at a new geographical site within Lusaka to provide backup to the current system. The backup HLR system which was scheduled to be commissioned in August 2018 as part of the GRZ Communication Towers Project has now been brought forward to mid July 2018,” Mr Mupeta stated.
“We sincerely apologise to all our esteemed customers for the inconvenience caused during this unfortunate outage.As a demonstration of how much we value our customers’ support, we will allow our customers to make free Zamtel-to-Zamtel calls from 22:00 Hours on Saturday, June 30th2018 to 12:00 Hours on Sunday, July 1st 2018.”
Mr Mupeta assured Zamtel customers that the company is committed to the provision of quality services adding that the ongoing network expansion and modernization project, as part of the US$ 280million investment, will reposition Zamtel as the prime driver of the country’s digital transformation journey.
Mmmmmmm?
Fooling zambians like PF.
Free calling at 10pm. People are sleeping
Freeeeee callssss at Intelligent! Vapohoka!
This gesture has flaws in heaps.
The bandwidth to accommodate this will be severely tested, and people will not be able to get through.
And the allowance is only intra-network provider.
Not good enough
Miles Sampa and Zamtel are both foolish. Free WiFi and a day’s free calling. Give Zamtel back to the Libyans.
I am shocked that Mupeta being an Engineer with such experience in Telcomms would be talking of power surge impacting such sensitive equipment such as the HLR, that is before we even talk of the back up story. The layout of power installations and power equipment in Telco this should never be heard of even when power is shut out and returns it doesn’t work the way most domestic installations are done … Mupeta is trying to appeal to the common consumer. Its the reason u dont hear of power related issues to the core network from other operators deapite the many ZESCO outages we experienced in the past. Please stop lying and say the truth.
It is most likely in my theory an implementation company botched up some new installations they had been working on since given the time it happened 02:30 that is when telcos do their tests on installed equipment when the network is off peak. I suspect during the testing something went wrong and Mupeta is Shielding the contractor. The power surge story is bogus telcos including Zamtel have very efficient power management systems. If he doesn’t then he is saying that he is a very poor engineer because the first and most important thing is to ensure that equipment has proper power backup and protection.
Mupeta is just another incompetent PF cadres just as the former boss Mwanakatwe was. Until we van get non partisan professionals ( not green ties) all our parastatals are doomed
Though he was putting up new power system from huawei
Good job Zamtel. That is what I call great management!
Sharon/Victor …you think they will suffer an expense if their customer is calling to another of their customer!!
You are naive my friend to say great job means u should have an understanding of what was involved but clearly u don’t.
Speed and Aggression. Good job!
Zamtel needs an experienced CEO not this engineer Mupeta ..get a CEO from outside or maybe PF is more interested in using this company as a cash cow and a place to offer employment for their sidechicks!!
“To avoid reoccurrence, Zamtel is accelerating the implementation of the second HLR system at a new geographical site within Lusaka to provide backup to the current system. The backup HLR system which was scheduled to be commissioned in August 2018 as part of the GRZ Communication Towers Project has now been brought forward to mid July 2018,” Mr Mupeta stated.
Really laughable …up to now these guys dont have back up!!
Heheheheheehhehehe!
This chap is an engineer even his language he talks like one from the clip on Mwabwantu …Zamtel needs an experienced CEO not this man learning on the job. He should have remained as Chief Technical Officer then got someone from outside…but it being Zambia we encourage mediocrity
Imagine such foolishness…. in this day and age
@Jay Jay:
Even the experienced CEO you want to get from outside was as inexperienced as Mupeta at some time in their life but eventually got developed and experienced like Mupeta is being developed now.
In fact it can be a waste of money getting some one for a short contract because the expatriate will go away with their experience when they leave whereas Mupeta will stay in Zambia with his experience to benefit the country for a long long term. Remember most of the so called experts just rely on Zambian technologists because they lack experience of the Zambian terrain.
Chilyata – a big company like Zamtel needs an experienced CEO, not a CEO learning on the job its too costly to the taxpayer!!
Just when ZICTA fines them with K4million then they reply with this. I think ZICTA should double the fine next time. Giving free zamtel to zamtel calls for 12 hrs is not enough. What about those who had subscribed to all networks calling and data bundles which just expired without being used .
How the hell do free calls on a weekend help me? I want the time I lost. I’m a major user of Zamtel’s Mobile Internet, and for me this was a major fack-up. I equally lost connections to critical systems I maintain.
This is what my bro Jay Jay calls laughable.
@Dokow:
You need a serious reality check on your life! You were dancing to PF Dununa reverse BUT now you want first world standards of service when Lungu fcked up the economy which is why transformers are being blown up! Stop mourning about your bundles because worse is coming end of July because you wont even have outages since your PF almighty leader Lungu has looted the Zambian coffers leaving nothing to pay Mozambique who supply power to ZESCO for your bundles!
@Chilyata
I’ve never danced to dununa. Sadly I’ve lost friends for always taking a swipe on the PF.
You need serious Business Continuity Planners or personnel. This is an acceptable in this day and age not to have a Resilient Business Continuity Plan especially for a firm like ZamTel. As consumers we should sue them for loss of business.
Let’s learn to understand each other people.
We’re one Zambia one nation,zamtel has strongly apologise so let us understand situation and let’s not call each other names,God bless you all.
How else will u improve if u cannot hold each other accountable …. u are going nowhere as a country with your approach. One Zambia One Nation is not twende chapamo even in n0nsense
And the claimed power outage and/or failure to repair whatever he claimed to have been damaged, continues. Zambia mediocrity par excellence..
Sydney is a clown and a traitor. He cant even allow his wife to have a bank account. Goes to india for 3 months with his family. Flies his managers in Business class. Told government not to under take financing that his predecessor was pursuing to have backup and now there is the disaster. He stubbed his boss in the back and its well known
Mushimbe and Misheck Lungu backed him up with the of statehouse known mercenaries. The chap has no plan trust me.
This is completely unbelievable and really laughable. Properly designed Telecom network systems are build to withstand all forms of failures – designed with zero tolerance to failure. Business continuity and resilience are at the core of modern telecom network systems. These embarrassments are caused by leadership and management failures, and these failures are aplenty and not in short supply at Zamtel. It would be unthinkable for this to happen at MTN and Airtel because the shareholders would not allow it. There a lot of problems at Zamtel and without exaggeration, every decent professional would want out. Zamtel has lost a lot of professionals in the last few years. The levels of employee frustration are alarmingly high and these can be seen in the rate of staff turnover. We can all…
We can all choose to look elsewhere in denial but that won’t change the facts on the ground … poor balance sheet and revenue figures, poor subscription base, high staff turnover, poor brand position and poor public perception.