Maxis took 10 hours to Acknowledge Nationwide Network Problems

At 1.36pm on Monday, Twitter user @belldybala_ posted a tweet saying that she is having problems to access the Maxis Internet service. Her tweet was later followed with over 10,000 unhappy comments on Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels.

Maxis experienced network problems, nationwide on October 7, around 1.28pm until it was restored at October 8, at 7.53am. The Maxis network outage lasted for approximately 18 hours and it took place nationwide.

During the outage, a huge number of its 11.02 million mobile subscribers were not able to get 4G signal, make calls/SMS or use Internet services. Maxis mobile apps including the Hotlink Red app were not accessible. MalaysianWireless observed that many users were only getting 2G signal on their phone despite Maxis signed a major “landmark” deal with Huawei a few days ago to deploy 5G service in the country. The signing, which, supposedly would make the nation proud, was witnessed by Malaysia Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.

Despite thousands of unhappy comments on social media from Maxis customers since 1.30pm on Oct 7, Maxis only acknowledged the issue at October 7 at 11.01pm, approximately 10 hours later after leaving paying customers in the dark without a fully functional mobile service.

Falling to explain the network problem itself, on Facebook and Twitter, Maxis posted the following on its official account (October 7 at 11.01pm):

[box type=”info” align=”aligncenter” ]You may have been experiencing some interruptions to our services. Rest assured that we are working hard to rectify this as soon as possible. We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding. We will notify you when services are fully restored.[/box]

However, MalaysianWireless observed that the Telco company did not contact each affected customers despite promising “….We will notify you when services are fully restored.”

Later in the morning (Tuesday, October 8, 7.53am), Maxis posted the following on Facebook and Twitter claiming that its network issues have resolved.

At the time of writing this article, no further explanation was provided by Maxis on what caused the network issues.

Maxis, one of the leading mobile network operator in Malaysia takes “pride” in their “continuous innovations”.

On its about page, the Telco said (full screenshot), “We ensure our customers enjoy superior communications experiences by offering the best network. At Maxis, we don’t believe in settling for average – we raise the bar with our industry-leading 4G LTE network, the widest and fastest in Malaysia. We have committed our long-term investments into expanding our 4G LTE coverage so that all our customers enjoy an uncompromised Internet experience.”

There are no statement from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) regarding the Maxis network outage at the time of writing. MalaysianWireless recommends that affected customers should make an official complaint with MCMC (link here) in order to obtain a proper explanation (and possibly compensation) from Maxis for the downtime.