Cellcom to refund one week's charges

Chairman Ami Erel: I want to believe that the next time such an incident happens, we'll all be in old-age homes.

Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE:CEL; TASE:CEL) CEO Amos Shapira has announced that the company will give a full refund to all its 3.3 million subscribers for telephone calls SMS messages in Israel for the seven days between November 25 and December 1, inclusive, in compensation for yesterday nationwide service outage. The refund will not cover international calls or Internet access.

Shapira said that subscribers would not have to contact the company's call centers to receive the refund. He added that the company would publish apologies in the media. "This was a serious breakdown, and the market and customers are justifiably talking about a serious fault. An inquiry found that, at the moment of the network crash, there was an apparent rise in activity. We still don’t know what caused this, and we're continuing the investigation."

Cellcom chairman Ami Erel said, "I've been in the telecommunications business for almost 30 years, and such things have almost never happen. We don't yet know why the incident happened, and management is doing everything it can to manage the crisis quickly and transparently. I want to believe that the next time such an incident happens, we'll all be in old-age homes."

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 2, 2010

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2010

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