Bezeq to give clients a week’s worth of free calls

Offer comes in the wake of four hour network malfunction whereby 50 percent of the company’s subscribers were unable to make or receive calls.

By RON FRIEDMAN
Bezeq Israeli Telecommunications Corp. (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimksi)
Bezeq Israeli Telecommunications Corp.
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimksi)
Bezeq announced on Wednesday that it will give its clients a week’s worth of free calls to cellular phones as compensation for the malfunction that occurred on its network on Tuesday.
During the four hours that the network was affected, 50 percent of the company’s subscribers were unable to make or receive calls.
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Though not all of its clients were affected by the partial crash of the network, Bezeq decided to give all of them, even those who did not suffer as a result of the malfunction, the benefit of free calls to cellular phone lines. Clients will be able to take advantage of the offer automatically starting on Sunday, with no registration required to receive it. To prevent abuse of the offer, Bezeq limited the compensation to 1,000 minutes on outgoing calls.
Bezeq services roughly 2.5 million landline customers and 1 million Internet subscribers.
“During the last 24 hours since the malfunction was resolved, we have been busy investigating the cause of the malfunction and taking preventative actions to help us avoid network failings, but since this was a very rare, nationwide failing, we decided also to provide all of our customers with a substantial compensation,” Bezeq CEO Avi Gabai said.
“We apologize for the inconvenience and promise that we are doing, and will continue to do, everything possible to maintain the quality and reliability of our network, and we will learn the necessary lessons from yesterday’s event,” the company said.
In the wake of Tuesday’s malfunction, a series of class action lawsuits amounting to hundreds of millions of shekels have been filed.
Legal firm Malka, Liebowitz, Shaar and Partners filed a class action lawsuit for NIS 104 million at the Nazareth District Court, claiming personal and business losses to hundreds of thousands of Bezeq customers.
Another lawyer, Yohi Geva, filed a class action lawsuit in the Tel Aviv District Court asking for NIS 217 million in compensation for lost business.
The malfunction, which initial findings indicate was caused by a breakdown in a switch connecting Bezeq’s next-generation network (NGN) to the rest of the system, occurred shortly after 9 a.m. and was only resolved at 1 p.m.