Israeli Netvision email services remain down after four days

Users of Cellcom’s Netvision email services which have not been functioning properly for four whole days are expected to finally get them back on Monay night. 

Company spokeswoman Danielle Gold Alon told The Jerusalem Post that the breakdown was “due to a malfunction originating in the system of a Hitachi email server.” She apologized to irked customers and said that engineering teams of both Cellcom and the Japanese company, Hitachi, had been working “around the clock for days” to restore service, which she said was “expected to return” on Monday night. 

Gold Alon declined to say how many Israelis use Netvision – Israel’s oldest Internet and email provider from decades ago. Netvision was established in 1998 as an Internet Service Provider, and 013 Netvision – a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cellcom Israel – resulted from a merger in September 2011.

Asked what compensation customers would get, given the fact that they couldn’t receive and/or send emails for such a long period – harming their work and other communication – she said that “We have all been so busy dealing with the problem that we haven’t discussed this yet.”

Trying to get technical support from Cellcom

It was nearly impossible to reach Cellcom’s technical staff by phone for days due to a long waiting list, and the expectation when service was going to be restored and details about what went wrong caused more confusion. At first, a message sounded on the company’s number stating that “there is a point difficulty with some of our customers. This is being handled.”

In fact, no Netvision customers had normal service. 

Some Cellcom customers who turned their router off and on had difficulties connecting to the Internet.