Maxis customers in Miri had a horrid day yesterday, when their mobile service provided by the operator was completely down for a good 8 hours. Based on reports, the services for both data and voice was down in major areas on the city, with Maxis only restoring it at 6am today. Imagine not being able to receive calls or messages for that long! Could KL’ites endure such a situation?

As usual, Sarawak users went on to social media and Maxis’s site to barrage the operator on the inconvenience, some demanding for compensation while others are threatening to switch over. One subscriber even remarked “Do I get paid for your incompetent behaviour? I guess not”. People are more and more reliant on their mobile devices to stay connected, business and livelihoods revolve around these devices nowadays, to an extent mobile phones are seldom switched-off, and having no reception for more than 5 hours could be detrimental for certain users.

This was the statement listed on Maxis site with regards to the outage:

Update: We’d like to share that mobile and internet services have been restored in the affected areas at 6am. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and would like to assure you that we are working with the local transmissions provider to avoid recurrences of such incidents. Once again, we apologise for the inconvenience caused.

Hi everyone, if you’re facing issues making calls and using the internet in Bintulu, Balingian, Beluru, Lambir, Miri, Limbang, Batu Niah, Dabei, Sibu, Mukah, Singgalang and Kuching, rectification works are in progress and we’ll have you back online soon. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.

“The information on the disruption was only posted by Maxis 2 hours after the connection went down” declared one user.