By Jamal Adel.
Beida, 8 January 2015:
Al Madar whose telephone network has been down in eastern Libya for almost a month, now . . .[restrict]says that its service has been restored, as a result of repairs to infrastructure damaged in the fighting in Benghazi.
The mobile provider also said that it had brought back coverage to areas in the Jebel Nafusa which have had outages because of damaged masts. The company says that it has hired mobile masts to fill in gaps in its coverage.
Much of Al Madar’s challenges in the east have been wrecked masts and the loss of power to key signal repeaters. Regular cuts to mains electricity ought to have been overcome using emergency generators. However back-up units at the company’s Benghazi main office at Buatni ran out of fuel and fresh supplies could not be brought through the fighting.
Some Al Madar subscribers in Benghazi were this evening still reporting problems. Though there have been occasional service interruptions with the rival Libyana mobile provider, which have been put down to power failures, the network has continued to function even while Al Madar collapsed.
At last week’s cabinet meeting, the government called in top managers of LTT, which owns both mobile networks, and demanded that they sort out Al Madar’s problems.
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