[UPDATE] Celcom faces network disruption, data services affected

[ UPDATE 5/11/2020 17:00 ]: Celcom has updated that its technical issue has been fully restored. For those who are still having problems accessing data are advised to switch flight mode on and off, or to restart their devices.

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A month after the last major network outage, several Celcom customers are now experiencing problems accessing the internet on their mobile devices. Based on the complaints, it appears that the issue had started this morning.

Celcom is currently trending on Twitter and a significant number of users complained of not being able to open websites and Google. Other applications such as YouTube, Grab and Food Panda appear to be affected as well. It isn’t clear how extensive the problem is but it appears to be sporadic.

Based on the tweets, Celcom’s data services isn’t completely down as some applications such as Facebook are reported to be accessible.

At the time of writing, our Yoodo line which uses Celcom’s network seems to be unaffected in Petaling Jaya.

Celcom is aware of the issue and they are working to solve the problem as soon as possible. According to Celcom’s website, they have announced that customers in some areas nationwide may find their data services affected due to a technical issue. They advised affected customers to restart their devices.

From the looks of it, Celcom had faced a similar interruption yesterday evening (4th November 2020) between 8.10pm to 8.54pm. The issue has been resolved and they also urged customers to restart their devices if the issue persists.

We’ve reached out to Celcom for further clarification. We will update this post once we received more info.

This is Celcom’s 6th major outage that we’ve covered in 2020. Prior to today’s issue, the blue telco had suffered nationwide data service disruption in July, August and October.

The last major network issue at Celcom occurred on 4th October which also affected all data services for a significant number of customers nationwide for 3 hours. As a token of appreciation for their customers’ patience, they had offered free unlimited data for 6 hours on two separate days.

Celcom CEO Idham Nawawi had revealed that the 4th October network disruption was caused by a software bug in a router which prevented their network from recovering in a matter of minutes after a power outage. After the incident, Idham says they have fixed the bug and will review all other elements of the network including their power systems, backups and uninterruptible power source.