A massive outage at Colt. Customers and global call centre giants affected

Since August, a cyber attack has blocked part of the systems of Colt Technology Services, a British telecoms operator with a large presence in businesses and among some major telemarketing specialists.

The outage is believed to be due to a cyber attack and is preventing customers from recording outgoing calls, thereby hindering their ability to track outgoing call campaigns and billing. Number portability is also compromised. Although telephone prospecting operations are less important now, this is a significant handicap when it comes to monitoring the performance of sales agents, confirms a call centre manager.

Manifone, a French telecom operator, has been asked by several major customers to recover telecom traffic.

No resolution to the outage is in sight
The teams at Colt responsible for repairing the damage and restoring the information systems are mainly based in India and do not appear to have the expertise to redeploy everything. Colt has warned its customers that a return to normal is not expected before October.