Norway’s state-owned telecoms firm Telenor was back on the defense Thursday after problems with its mobile phone network ended up shutting down the country’s entire train system. It took Telenor more than two hours to fix the problems, stranding commuters and passenges and blocking access to emergency services.
The network problems “should have been fixed automatically within seconds,” Haakon Bryhni, a professor and researcher at SimulaMet in Oslo, told state broadcaster NRK. “There are many factors that can take down a network, but all Norwegian networks should be prepared for them” with automatic back-up systems.
In this case, the trains had to stand still where they were because they use the Telenor network to communicate, while anyone else in trouble couldn’t get through to police, ambulance or fire brigades. Bryhni and others were calling for a thorough investigation of what went wrong.
Telenor Norge officials apologized for the breakdown and can expect a probe by the national communications authority Nkom. At the same time, they claimed Telenor Norge, whose international parent company is also in trouble over its former operations in Myanmar, does have “reserve solutions in place,” but couldn’t answer whether the problem was in its core network. The network broke down at 3:15pm, just as the commuter rush was beginning, and wasn’t fixed until 5:25pm, but it took much more time to get trains and their stranded passengers to their destinations.
NewsinEnglish.no staff
