Thousands Suffer Phone Outage Due to KT Fire

 

People queue to use payphones in Seoul on Saturday.

A fire at a local office of telecom provider KT on Saturday morning caused hundreds of thousands of mobile phone and Internet service users to suffer outages.

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Half of telecom cables buried 4 m under the surface and stretching 150 m were burnt, and 2,833 relay stations in central and western Seoul and 215,000 users suffered stoppages, especially in the trendy Hongik University and Myeong-dong areas, on Saturday and Sunday.

For the first time in many years long lines of people formed in front of public telephone booths at Sinchon and Hongik University subway stations, while people unable to pay for services and goods because credit card terminals became useless had to line up in front of ATMs.

Subway storage lockers, parking lot gates and other facilities connected wirelessly were rendered useless. Park Jong-won (26), a university student in Mapo said, "I couldn't contact my girlfriend because of the stoppage. I felt like I had flown back to the analogue age".

Some effects were serious. Police said some emergency hotlines were unreachable due to the stoppage and the problem lasted until Sunday afternoon. Lee Yoon-ho at Dongguk University said, "The problem is that the public was unable to make emergency calls. This could have led to serious consequences".

KT's underground telecom cables are burned out in Seoul on Saturday.

KT has decided to waive one month of fees for affected customers. A KT staffer said users who do not live in the affected areas but happened to be staying there could also be compensated. KT is also apparently considering additional compensation for around 170,000 affected businesses, but there are no clauses in contracts obliging it to do so.

The mobile provider said it had fixed about 97 percent of Internet connections and some 63 percent of the mobile network as of Sunday evening but it will take a couple of days until complete recovery.