Press Releases

Budapest, February 26, 2008 14:00

Magyar Telekom’s technicians are working full steam to restore the telecommunications services which became unavailable as a consequence of criminal acts committed yesterday. Magyar Telekom will compensate its customers for the service outage by crediting the proportionate part of the monthly fee to their next service bill.

In the night from Sunday to Monday 36 telecommunications core cables were damaged by theft in the 19th district of Budapest. As a consequence, fixed-line telephone and Internet services are not available in most of Kispest. Problems occurred with the bank settlement and credit card services too, because the theft caused damage both in Magyar Telekom’s leased line network and in Giro Zrt.’s banking transaction network. Magyar Telekom is treating the restoration of the banking services as high priority.

Based on the first expert estimates, taking into consideration the number of the damaged cables and the working time requirement of the repairs, Magyar Telekom expects to fully restore the fixed telephone and Internet services for all customers in Kispest within 8 days.

As in all similar previous cases, Magyar Telekom reported the incident to the police with the suspicion of crime committed by unknown perpetrators. The damage to Magyar Telekom is currently being assessed. According to the first estimates, the damage, the costs of the restoration and the value of the outage could reach 50-55 million HUF.

“Magyar Telekom is spending considerable sums on security measures and related development in order to prevent similar incidents, but the risk of crime-related damage still exists despite all these steps,” emphasized Mr. Péter Gencsy, Magyar Telekom’s security director. The price of non-ferrous materials is at a record high level, and the theft of cables is causing damage in the order of billions for all operators of telecom and other networks worldwide.

The repair of the damage and elimination of the service outages caused by the criminal actions in Budapest will continue until the services affected are fully restored. In compliance with its effective General Terms of Contract Magyar Telekom will credit the monthly fee equivalent of the service outage to the next bill of its customers. Customers are requested to call the toll-free 1412 residential or the 1435 business customer care number or contact the nearest T-Pont shop for more information.