Mobily compensates 11m customers with week-long up to 50% discount for 7 hour outage

On Wednesday, July 16, 2008, Etihad Etisalat's network suffered a 7 hour long outage, partly due to an error from a subcontractor, Saudi Oger, who cut through one of Mobily's core network cables on the intersection of King Abdullah Road with Takhassusi Street. The contractor was working on a project unrelated to Mobily's business and had been briefed of the cable's location through maps, diagrams and a series of meetings. Nevertheless, the contractor cut through the cable, even though it was buried under seven meters of re-enforced concrete.

The outage lasted for seven hours, cutting off service to Mobily's customers at a critical time of the day. Engineers and technicians from Mobily rushed to the scene to bring the network back to life.

In the statement issued Monday, Mobily said it would offer its entire 11 million strong customer-base a discount that reaches 50% starting Tuesday, July 22, 2008 until Monday, July 28, 2008, as part of its commitment customer happiness and satisfaction.

"This is the least we can do to compensate our customers for some of the loss they suffered during the outage,"

the company said in the statement.

The discount is the highest in the history of the company, and the longest running, and comes as part of Mobily's initiative to stand up against the crisis.

The compensation is also the first of its kind in Saudi mobile telecommunication history. Mobily itself said it was conducting a re-evaluation of the current situation of its network to ensure that it had safeguards against possible outages in the future.

In a letter addressed to employees, Mobily's managing director and chief executive officer, Khalid Omar Al Kaf, said: "I would also like to thank colleagues in the frontline, who had to deal with the effects of this outage on a face-to-face basis with customers, and those who were out there in the field working round the clock to bring the network back online — both of whom performed their roles as part of their sense of responsibility and sense of commitment to professionalism."