Vodafone Qatar network fully restored, says company

On July 17, Vodafone Qatar experienced a major network outage with its Home Location Register (HLR), a key hardware component of its core network. The equipment failure took place during a network upgrade and extended to the network back-up and redundancy systems. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the company said that it will launch its customer appreciation programme (YOU FIRST) which will give Vodafone's consumer and business postpaid customers a total of 18 GB of free data over the next three months, 6GB each month plus 30% of their monthly plan fee credited on their next bill.Customers will be notified by SMS when their free data has been added. Additionally, new postpaid customers who sign up before August 15 will also receive 30% of their monthly plan fee credited to their first month bill, Vodafone said in the statement.Prepaid customers will receive 500 Flex which will be valid for five days to use any way they want for international and local calls, SMS or data, the statement said, adding that customers will be notified by SMS within the next two weeks when their FLEX has been added.Ian Gray, CEO of Vodafone Qatar, said: "We strive to provide our customers with world-class service every day and the outage of our network is most disappointing to us and our customers. We thank our customers for their loyalty and because sorry is not just a word, we've launched the YOU FIRST programme in appreciation for their patience."Vodafone Qatar is a Qatari shareholding company listed on the Qatar Stock Exchange. It is a member of Vodafone Group, the second licensee of public mobile networks and services and the second licence of fixed line networks and services in Qatar. Vodafone Qatar launched its commercial operations on March 1, 2009.