Astro subscribers nationwide were left with blank screens for hours yesterday as some of the satellite TV provicer’s channels went off the air.
Customers also complained of being left on the hook when their calls to Astro’s customer service line went unanswered after the boradcast disruptions began at around 5pm.
In response to overwhelming customer complaints, Astro initially posted the following message to its Facebook page: “Astro regrets to inform that a number of its TV channels, radio stations and customer call centre/self-servce portal are experiencing interruption. We are working to rectify this and hope to resume normal service as soon as possible. Astro apologises to all our subscribers for the inconvenienced caused.To contact us, kindly use or social media channels, fb.com/astro or twitter @astroonline.”
After several affected channels went back on air at around 8.30pm last night, Astro followed up with a revised Facebook meesage: “Astro regrets to inform that a number of its TV channels and self-service portal are experiencing interruption. We are working to rectify this and hope to resume normal service as soon as possible. Channels restored include Astro Arena Ch801/HD Ch802, Astro SuperSport Ch810, Astro Supersports 4 Ch817, Astro PPV HD Ch498, FOX Sports 2 Ch812, YOG 1 ch820/HD Ch840, YOG Ch821, Nat Geo HD Ch573, History Hd Ch 575,Discovery HD Ch571, Disney XD HD Ch637, A List HD Ch456, Star World HD Ch722, Maya HD Ch135 & Astro Hitz Ch705. Astro apologises to all our subscribers for the inconvenience caused.”
While most cases of boradcasrt disruptions involved Astro’s DTH satellite service customers, the company’s IPTV sercice also experienced “network connection” problems for some channels, with customers seeing an on-screen message requiring them to restart their modems and Astro decoders.
The Malaysian Insider reports that despite a Facebook message posted at midnight reassuring subscribers, Astro services were not fully restored until 7am this morning.
