Swisscom : boss apologises for massive network outage - newspaper

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swisscom Chief Executive Urs Schaeppi has apologised for the massive outage of the telecoms company's services last week which meant emergency services could not be contacted by Swiss callers for eight hours.

The nationwide failure of its fixed-line network was the latest by the state-controlled company and followed three similar problems in 2020.

In the latest case, part-time firefighters were called up to their stations to help in emergencies when the entire fixed-line phone network for Switzerland failed in the early hours of Friday morning.

"I apologise to the firefighters and everyone involved. The failure shook me a lot. That is absolutely not what we expect from ourselves at Swisscom," Schaeppi told the Neue Zuercher Zeitung in an article published on Wednesday.

The collapse was caused by a software malfunction when the company was carrying out maintenance work on its telephony platform for business customers, he said.

"A software update led to a malfunction that triggered a domino effect," Schaeppi said. "Although stability is our top priority, individual failures can occur. Unfortunately, this cannot be prevented," he told the newspaper.

(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Stephen Coates)