Problems with 3G service yesterday? You’re not alone…over 2 million affected

SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA – August 30^th, 2012 – Were you having issues with your 3G cell phone line or datacard yesterday?  You weren’t alone…over 2 million people not alone.

Although it is still unclear as to what caused ICE’s / Kolbi’s massive 3G network  failure yesterday, the Telecommunications Supervision Department (SUTEL) will evaluate the possible compensation of affected clients, according to article number 26 in the Service Provider and Quality Regulation.

According to ICE, the interruption affected over 2 million 3G telephone and internet subscribers.  The situation also affected some ATM machines and credit card processing equipment used in stores, which use ICE’s 3G system for communication.

The interruption in service seems to have begun mid-afternoon and lasted into the late evening.

Claro and Movistar also reported that they had problems connecting with ICE’s network since the early afternoon.

Standard landline phones and non-3G cellular lines did not seem to be affected.

According to ICE, the problem affected mostly users in the San Jose and central valley areas, although there were reports of issues in other areas of the country as well.  Inside Costa Rica can verify the outage affected several areas of Guanacaste.

Article number 26 in the Service Provider and Quality Regulation states, “ in case of interruptions, the operators and suppliers must inform the technical reasons that caused the interruption to SUTEL in a period no greater than 12 hours as of the detection of the interruption, as well as the solutions and timeframes to resolve (the situation).”

However, as of 8:00 pm last night, there had not been any technical report that would allow SUTEL to assess possible corrective measures and compensation to those affected.

Where you one of the affected? Let us know in the comments below.