A number of Qatar residents reported on Twitter yesterday that they were unable to access the internet for a period of a few minutes to several hours.
The outage appeared to affect most people last night, though some residents said their service also cut out during the afternoon. No one has complained of outages this morning.
Most of those who lost online access were subscribers to Ooredoo mobile and home internet:
Speaking to Doha News on Twitter, Ooredoo said:
@dohanews Hi, there was a temporary problem with the internet for some of our customers its resolved now — Ooredoo Qatar (@OoredooQatar) February 5, 2014
@dohanews and we apologize for any inconvenience — Ooredoo Qatar (@OoredooQatar) February 5, 2014
But some pointed to Ooredoo’s Domain Name System (DNS) server as the potential source of the problem.
Apparently, @OoredooQatar dns is out. Allot of my friends aren’t able to access the internet. @dohanews
— Tamir (@TamirOmara) February 5, 2014
Though internet was restored quickly for many customers, some residents said they were disappointed with the customer service they received:
@dohanews Yes but I was shocked when I called Ooredoo & lines were down then when I got through their response was “We can’t do anything.”
— 1987 (@NaserMestarihi) February 6, 2014
The outage comes at a time when competition is heating up between the state-backed telecom provider and Vodafone, which broke Ooredoo’s domestic monopoly in 2009.
According to its latest financial results, Vodafone is still not turning a profit, but its losses are narrowing.
Both companies made announcements this week about new offerings for residents, with Vodafone establishing unlimited calling plans, and Ooredoo scrapping a QR60/month fee for 4G internet services.
Thoughts?