TIGO VS OUR SAFETY

A failure in contingency planning and disaster recovery

Today, on November 14, 2012 in Tanzania, the TIGO network was completely not accessible. It was not possible to make calls or send messages. TCRA reports that in June 2012 TIGO had Subscriber base of 5,613,330 and 5,509,337 Registered Subscribers (http://tcra.go.tz/publications/telecomStatsJune12.pdf). This means, the outage of the TIGO network today has affected a big number of subscribers, related business and corporate as well and individual networks. A typical example is when one wants to communicate on behalf of his/her organization. It is also possible that individuals want to communicate and do their businesses or need to access their TIGO Pesa accounts. This has not been possible through TIGO.

It is possible to extend this thinking to other aspects of our nation including security and safety both physically and in the cyber space. These issues may need further

discussion.

Few questions are relevant though:
1. Did TIGO think of business continuity and disaster recovery?
2. Can we rely on TIGO for mission critical activities at a national, organizational, and individual levels?
3. Is it possible to now establish a customer compensation mechanism in situation like this?
4. Is it possible that what happened to TIGO can also happen to other providers?
5. Can this situation happen to all providers in Tanzania at once?
6. What is our national Business Continuity plan?

Source:Jim Yonaz on facebook.