Mobilink claims partial restoration of services

Mobilink on Monday claimed partial restoration of all services including voice connectivity, SMS as well as data available in the offices of the company in the northern region, suspended due to fire in the company's Main Switcher Center (MSC -5) Sunday evening.
Mobilink services - the largest cellular service provider of the country with 35 million customers - remained suspended in most parts of the country after a fire broke out in the company's MSC in Islamabad. It resulted in complete network outage, primarily in the northern region from 5 PM on Sunday evening till the filing of this report. As a result of this incident, millions of customers suffered and thousands are still continuing to suffer service interruptions in the affected areas.
Mobilink Network Operation Control (NOC) caught fire last month and this is the second time within a month that another building of the company caught fire. Sources in the company revealed that fire was due to a blast of power battery in the power room. The whole building caught fire that has resulted in huge loss to the building and equipment installed.
Umar Manzur Director Public Relations Mobilink while talking to Business Recorder claimed that partial connectivity was restored in the early hours of the morning and technical teams are continuing to work to ensure that the network is fully restored at the earliest.
Umar Manzur confirmed that fire incident was reported at one of the company's technical hubs in Islamabad on the evening of Sunday March 7 causing suspension of Mobilink services in Northern parts of the country including Islamabad and Rawalpindi. He said complete restoration of all services is expected within the day. There was no loss of life and fire was controlled in the early hours of Monday morning and mainly damaged the building, he added.
Replying to a question, Umar said that loss estimates are yet to be made and the company's primary concern was to restore services. He further said that investigation of the matter would start as soon as the services are restored. All Mobilink numbers in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and other cities in North remained offline showing no activity (SMS/Calls/GPRS) for 24 hours. Network is reportedly getting back to normal in Islamabad and other affected areas. However, customers were still complaining of no connectivity till the filing of this report.