Vodafone Ukraine struggles with app, payment failures after Kyivstar outage
Mobile operator Vodafone Ukraine is experiencing problems with account top-ups and its app due to an increased load on its payment acceptance system caused by a major outage in the Kyivstar network, the company reported on Facebook on Dec. 12.
This has resulted in delays in crediting payments to users' balances, as well as timeouts or errors during top-ups.
"Due to a technical failure and network outage on Kyivstar's side, we are seeing a surge in traffic on Vodafone's systems with numerous requests from Kyivstar subscribers for the national roaming service,” Vodafone Ukraine said.
"The service is working fine on our side. At least we see Lifecell subscribers registered on our network using the national roaming service.”
"We have already informed our Kyivstar colleagues about this, we are in contact with them and would like to restore the service as soon as possible.”
Kyivstar, Ukraine's largest mobile operator, faced a major outage on the morning of Dec. 12, the company announced on Facebook.
Mobile connection and internet are not available, and the operator's website is also down.
National roaming is not functioning because Kyivstar's network cannot transfer information about its subscribers to other operators' networks, said Stanislav Prybytko, Mobile Communication Department Head at the Ukrainian Digital Ministry.
The company initially attributed the problem to a technical glitch, but eventually acknowledged that it was the target of a powerful cyberattack, causing a technical failure that temporarily disrupted communication services and internet access for millions of Ukrainians.
On the same day, Monobank, a Ukrainian online banking service, reported a massive DDoS attack on its system, targeting Amazon's entry points, including the banks and the website, the bank’s co-founder Oleh Gorokhovsky reported on Telegram on Dec. 12.
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