Angola’s largest telecoms network disrupted
After telecommunications company Unitel had a series of network disruptions in Angola in the past month, the company has issued a statement noting that possible “malicious action” may be the cause.
Unitel is the largest telecommunications operator in Angola, with a 73 percent share of the market. When the first disruption occurred on 17 February, Unitel gave no cause for the company’s service disruptions and after more than 24 hours, the company announced the return of its services.
Since then, Unitel has reportedly experienced six further network disruptions, which have rendered customers unable to make phone calls, use internet services, or send text messages for several hours. The company also said that the problem affected important equipment in one of the main data processing centres located in Luanda.
On 11 March 2022, Unitel issued a statement noting that it is possible “malicious action” may have been behind the disruptions to its services in recent weeks. The communique noted that the cause of the “anomalies” is unclear and that “although unlikely, since Unitel has a sufficiently secure network, the possibility of malicious activity is not ruled out for now.”
Unitel is reportedly in talks with its infrastructure partners and applying new software to its operations centre to prevent further disruptions. Although the company did not indicate when these changes would come into effect, it said that further disruptions cannot be ruled out in the immediate term.
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