Network services mostly restored after SGSN–MME issues fixed

Dec 7, 2018 20:50 GMT  ·  By

Millions of customers of O2, SoftBank, Tesco Mobile, and Sky Mobile mobile carriers experienced mobile data and network outages starting December 6 because of expired certificates in Ericsson's Serving GPRS Support Node – Mobility Management Entity (SGSN–MME) software.

"During December 6, 2018, Ericsson has identified an issue in certain nodes in the core network resulting in network disturbances for a limited number of customers in multiple countries using two specific software versions of the SGSN–MME (Serving GPRS Support Node – Mobility Management Entity)," said Ericsson's press release.

As per Ericsson's analysis of the mobile networks' outage incident, the root cause behind it was an expired software certificate which led to the shutdown of affected network equipment.

The shutdown was triggered because of the industry standard practices which require mobile network equipment to turn off when certificates expire to prevent security breaches after bad actors would add malicious devices into a carrier's network.

The outages affected the networks' mobile data, messaging, and voice services

Börje Ekholm, Ericsson's President and CEO added that “The faulty software that has caused these issues is being decommissioned and we apologize not only to our customers but also to their customers. We work hard to ensure that our customers can limit the impact and restore their services as soon as possible.”

Erricson's statement also said that it restored the network service issue behind the large-scale outages that led to customers of British and Japanese carriers O2, SoftBank, Tesco Mobile, and Sky Mobile not being able to make or receive calls and not having access to mobile data while on the go.

According to a SoftBank press release following the network outage, the consumers were affected between 1:39 pm and 6:04 pm (JST) on Thursday, December 6, 2018, with SoftBank and Y!mobile 4G LTE mobile phone service, fixed-line telephone service “Ouchi-No-Denwa” and SoftBank Air being the impacted services.

O2 also tweeted a short statement after it restored all services during early morning December 7, saying that their technical teams will continue to keep a close eye on the network's performance.