The regulator says it is still doing investigations to ensure that people who suffered prolonged outages during the storm get refunds or have credits applied to their accounts.
In future ComReg says it expects that telecoms companies will ensure charges are not imposed on customers for services that are requested but not supplied, including when they are affected by prolonged outages.
“ComReg expects providers to have processes in place to address this issue for their affected customers in a timely manner so that if alternative connections are not provided, charges are not imposed, or refunds/credits are applied as soon as possible,” it says in a paper published today about the lessons learnt from Storm Éowyn.
One of the measures being organised to minimise disruption during future storms is a set of locations that are kept on air, or recovered as quickly as possible, in order to ensure a base level of mobile phone coverage for a large proportion of the population.
ComReg says it has engaged with the industry on the issue, and mobile phone operators have identified a number of top priority sites that are outside the five main cities. This list is currently being revised, with a view to finalising it with the Government.
“It has also been discussed with other relevant agencies, in an attempt to secure service continuity from these sites,” the ComReg paper says. “This would involve better protecting the mobile network elements, hardening power and transmission feeds, and ensuring site access is kept open, where possible during weather events.”
The actions are part of a wider Government response to last January’s unprecedented storm, which is designed to ensure more resilience, including more availability of telecommunications.
ComReg says Storm Éowyn stretched resources, and afterwards it reviewed incident reporting processes, which led to the identification of a number of opportunities for improvement.
For example it was discovered that the Incident Reporting Portal used by providers of telecom services should be more robust. As a result, the reporting of incidents is being moved to ComReg’s own data platform.
“During Storm Éowyn, the National Emergency Coordination Group requested detailed county by county breakdown of faults experienced on the electronics communications network, in order to better facilitate recovery actions,” the paper says.
“This was a departure from previous weather events and was triggered by the unprecedented severity of the storm. Providers and ComReg identified issues with such unrehearsed reporting, and this has resulted in [us] proposing new draft reporting templates.”
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