If you do not use the SIM card megaphone for a long time. Operator "MegaFon" brutally cheats all its subscribers for money How long will there be a megaphone connection

In January - March 2017, Megafon closed about 400 communication stores. A person close to Megafon told Vedomosti about this. The operator's representative Yulia Dorokhina clarifies that the company has reduced the network by more than 400 points, or 10%. This is done to improve the efficiency of the retail network and reduce the number of new connections in the market as a whole: the penetration of mobile services in Russia has exceeded 180%, she explains. Megafon is ready for a further reduction in the retail network, but this will depend on market conditions, Dorokhina notes.

In Russia in general and Megafon in particular, there are too many communication salons, representatives of the operator have repeatedly said. In the summer of 2016, the CEO of the company Sergei Soldatenkov, at a meeting with analysts, promised to reduce the retail network by 25-40% to 2500-3000 stores within 3-5 years. The operator is going to focus not on increasing the number of customers, but on retaining the subscriber base and by reducing retail it intends to reduce the annual churn of subscribers from 50 to 35%, UBS analyst Roman Arbuzov quoted him then. The payment of new subscribers for services does not cover the costs of maintaining retail networks, follows from the report published later by Megafon.

The largest competitor of Megafon, MTS, is also cutting back on retail. In the first quarter, MTS reduced 7.5% of the network. By April, she had 5,725 communication salons, says the operator's representative Dmitry Solodovnikov. According to him, MTS expects further reduction of retail networks from other operators and cellular retailers. This will help stabilize the market, Solodovnikov said.

Subscribers have not increased

According to AC&M Consulting, in the first quarter of 2017, the number of MTS subscribers decreased by about 1 million to 79 million, VimpelCom - by 1.3 million to 57 million. MegaFon has not changed this indicator - 75.6 million. Tele2 does not disclose its subscriber base.

The retail network of T2 RTK Holding (Tele2) did not decline in January-March, said its representative Olga Galushina. By April, the operator had 3,400 branded showrooms and modules. But at the same time, retail is based on franchising. Tele2 has built a high-quality network and is now focusing on the efficiency of each outlet, as well as developing online sales, Galushina says.

But VimpelCom plans to expand retail. It is necessary to improve the quality of sales, expand the range of services sold, explains Anna Aibasheva, a representative of VimpelCom. The operator does not disclose the number of salons. According to Infoline-Analytics, at the end of the third quarter of 2016, Vimpelcom had 3,850 points of sale, including 2,300 franchised ones.

Euroset (equally owned by VimpelCom and Megafon) and Svyaznoy are planning a tiny growth. Euroset has about 4,000 stores, the company intends to slightly increase their number, says the representative of the chain Alexandra Pertseva. For the first quarter of 2017, the Svyaznoy network increased by 32 stores to 2,732 retail outlets, said company representative Alexandra Vinogradova. Svyaznoy plans to expand its retail network by several dozen stores by the end of the year, she says.

Cellular retail in Russia is excessive, so most retail outlets bring losses, says Denis Kuskov, CEO of Telecom Daily. A significant increase in subscriber bases and an increase in phone sales is not observed, and the connection of new services and their payment are gradually migrating to the Internet. A slight increase in the number of salons is possible in the course of optimizing their location, but the radical expansion of chains is a thing of the past, Kuskov notes.

Today, all specialized sites and my feeds are full of links to this material. I think that since it is widely sold on the network, it will not disappear anymore, but nevertheless I will save it here for memory. It is written emotionally, chaotically (I saved the original text without any corrections, fortunately there is nothing completely unprintable there), but, of course, this text has its own truth of life. Yes, a person looks at everything from his own bell tower, from the bell tower of the "former", but apparently there is a resentment. I will not give my vision of the situation in Megafon, because we must start from the very legendary times of the North-West GSM, but I will make only one remark. There is a culture of "company management" (with which we are far from all right), but there is also a "culture of ownership". It is clear that cellular communication has entered into saturation, this is a normal phenomenon that all industries go through, no one grows extensively forever. But further, confused in the absence of clear and, most importantly, goals that bring quick results, cellular companies went wild (I will not delve into the topic). Here it would be sensible for shareholders to assess both potential and opportunities, but ... but instead, they want "eternal growth." I occasionally communicate with the shareholders of telecom companies, they are, of course, screwed up by analysts and consultants, and they love to give examples from the IT field, 70 people work in WhatsApp, and the company costs 12 billion. But these are examples taken out of context, another thing is that examples are very tempting, besides, people who once (and often more than once) have taken the initiative simply cannot calm down and "rest on their laurels." It is at such and such moments that the "culture of ownership" manifests itself, you need to understand what can be required from companies, that is, from their management. At the same time, without achieving any significant success on new fronts, powerful "optimization" begins to show how efficiency increases from the other side. There are risky initiatives, and there are bad ones, But how to distinguish? This is the skill, this is the culture. Unfortunately, this is not only our misfortune and problem. I have the opportunity to communicate with foreign colleagues, the same problems, some on a larger scale, some on a smaller scale. What this leads to, in the text, is another matter that the text gives a very narrow view of the problem.

As many already know, last Friday, May 19, MegaFon had 3 branches without communication. Volga region, Central branch and Moscow region. The accident is unprecedented for the company, and it will take a long time to clean up the consequences of its MF. Further, my opinion as a former employee (engineer / IT specialist), why this could happen. Or, more simply, how my favorite company was brought up.

Everything written below is purely my IMHO, it can be completely subjective, I can omit something, but since I have been cooking in all this mess for a very long time, the memories and sensations are still fresh. This is my first and last post, you have the right to copy the text, distribute, quote and do whatever you want with it. I won't go to this account anymore, because I don't believe in decency and freedom of speech. There is only one goal, to raise at least a little hype.

I worked at MegaFon for many years. With enthusiasm, a lot of rework, let's just say with the belief that I am doing something meaningful, that the future is ours ... And the company really grew, the coverage grew, becoming the best. The professionalism of the team grew, the team grew stronger, the salary grew.

The first suspicions of my colleagues and I began to arise in 2012-13. When we suddenly found out that we were working on an outdated model. In those years, Mr. Tavrin was just forming the team, but he already promised big changes. Federalization, optimization, cost reduction and other words that are pleasing to the ear of an MBA graduate. Now this is where we can finish the story, but then it was not so scary. It would seem, who in their minds would shake the infrastructure, working, debugged over the years? After all, they usually do not save on engineers / engineers ... But this is exactly what our top did in the first place.

Plans were announced to optimize costs, and tadams, it was our technical staff that turned out to be the most unoptimized. The plans were ambitious, the federalization of all monitoring systems, the unification of operations in highly qualified centers in St. Petersburg and Samara, the introduction of AI, and unified systems for accounting / processing of accidents and tasks for the entire country. But as always it was small, but it was necessary to cut half of the technical staff from the old teams. And for the second, allocate a quota with a decrease in positions. Guess who left?

Almost all those who stood at the origins of the infrastructure in the branches left, the operation in the regions was especially hard, and few agreed to downgrade. There were young people without work experience and those who managed to keep their positions. It was planned to compensate for this by the Unified Network Management Centers (UCNC), in which they wanted to gather professionals. And turn their work into streaming with a narrower specialization. The idea was that a group of professionals serve several branches of the company at once. That is, if earlier all the Volga regions were exploited for 200 hours (conditionally), now they should have 20 (conditionally), in St. Petersburg. And those 20 (conditionally) unfortunates who remained in the branch were supposed to help them. The new monitoring was supposed to help in this, but it was turned from powerful departments, on which the network was held up before (I believe that the most stable in the Russian Federation), into a department of dummies who are not responsible for anything at all. And the most important function of the old monitoring - coordination of the work of other departments ... was simply removed. If earlier it was a group of young guys that bored everyone around until even the most insignificant problems were eliminated. Then the new monitoring function became sick! handing over the emergency to those 20 unfortunates from the branch and 20 from the ECUS who are now in charge of the whole of those parts. And then only the most critical, the rest of the staff had to look for himself, using the web platform created for this. Needless to say that all this has turned into an endless series of mistakes, accidents and mutual hatred? And to this day it works through one place. And to improve statistics, and beautiful performance reports, the accident criteria were revised. What used to be a fucking starry star suddenly became an insignificant incident. For some categories, the permissible degradation was generally increased by more than fourfold. But what can I say, many types of errors on the equipment have ceased to be processed altogether, since they have allegedly become insignificant.

Then I really began to feel the pressure that everyone knows where you work. Complaints, comments from friends, jokes about "the megaphone does not catch" poured in. And the company happily reported on the portal, about how everything works wonderfully and smoothly. It would seem that you can live? But that was just the beginning.

Since 2014, so many different bureaucratic systems have been introduced ... Endless forms, applications, web services, accounting systems. I was still tolerant, but guess who suffered the most? Engineers, Technicians, IT specialists. Those who were responsible, in principle, for the most important things, our leadership systematically turned into typical officials. Nothing should happen without filling out the appropriate forms and reports, such was the slogan. And what's the best way to make him turn into a bureaucrat? Put him in a bog of bureaucracy and pay less money. The ECUS did not cope with the work and demanded new quotas for the staff, our management, in turn, added more control systems for the personnel of the infrastructure, to analyze the possibility of further reductions in the branches. From close-knit teams, the infrastructure in the regions turned into the heroes of the Lost series, who were simply trying to survive. From well-coordinated teamwork, everything turned into some kind of dragging the blanket over yourself. In response, the UCCs began to close the work on themselves, and in the end they stopped informing the others about what they were doing. Salaries stopped growing completely from the word, and remained at the level of 2013. Career growth, in principle, disappeared as a species. Professional development and training is dead.

As a result, by the time I left at the end of 2016, the infrastructure in the regions had acquired an extremely deplorable form. My work (and my colleagues too) turned into some kind of endless struggle with the system. ETSUS who do not have a high-quality performance of their work, but only speed. Colleagues from other departments, who are shaking for their places, and are simply hiding behind the wall of the bureaucracy erected by the company. Linear and top management who is afraid to tell the truth, and only silently obeys. All this is under the sauce of complete disagreement, mutual distrust, and just resentment towards the leadership and what is happening. It got to the point of giving up on everything except direct orders, the company has become the most popular way of working. Simply because this is how business processes began to be built. Everything turned into such a swamp that even on the corporate system of applications there was an application for help in finding the required application form ... And all this against the background of a growing number of complaints about communication and a complete lack of understanding (and indeed a desire to know) what is going on among the tops at the bottom. And most importantly, everyone understood that sooner or later this would lead to collapse.

It is important to note that MegaFon is a very large company, and all the consequences in it do not occur immediately, but by inertia after a rather long period of time. Therefore, the collapse of the infrastructure did not really affect immediately. And so it happened that the consequences covered the company only now.

After reading all of the above, you probably already have your hair on end, but no, this is only a small part of the problems. It is worth adding the following to the already written wall of text. The accident occurred because:

First, the broken equipment was lobbied by the director of development (technical development of the network, who is now the director of infrastructure sick!), With the education of a marketer ... Someone asked techies why they want a telecom vendor, not HP? No.

Second, how many people have been trained to operate this equipment? A handful. And then they cut it down, which I wrote about. And until 2017, in general, everyone except Moscow and the UCCUs went with any beard training.

Third, federalization has affected everything. So we closed three branches for 2 nodes. It looks especially fresh and innovative against the background of past years, when we have reserved everything we can and not once. By distributing equipment geographically to each region of the branch, up to several data centers per city.

Finally, fourthly, it is the complete burnout of those personnel. This weighs terribly on those who remain when people feel that nothing good is ahead of them. Needless to say, my most optimistic colleagues have even begun to admit that the company is falling apart. What can I say, this year, due to the fact that MegaFon did not fulfill the profit plan, it was decided to give engineers / IT specialists an annual bonus in the amount of half the salary. Those people who conscientiously fulfilled their goals all year, got up at night to eliminate accidents, and worked on weekends. Simply because the company received less profit. Someone might say that they didn’t receive enough because the accidents were performed poorly? By the standards of the old days, yes, but by the current ones it is excellent. With what enthusiasm and responsibility does the average engineer now feel about their work? But I do not even raise the issue of one of the lowest salaries in the telecom.

And the other day, Mr. Soldatenkov (director of MegaFon), made an appeal to the employees, hinting at how bad they were, that they had allowed this. They were sent by my former colleagues, and I got a bomb. So everyone already does not give a shit, give a shit about the network, give a shit about communication, give a shit about corporate values. The predecessor of the current gendera ruined most of what worked great, and did everything to make it as difficult as possible with what was left to work. The current one has deprived people of financial motivation, so do not be surprised at what is happening. WannaCry, both HLR cases are largely the result of the collapse of what is happening in the most important part of the company.

There is a lot more to write, but what's the point? I left, now I work for a much smaller company. Is the current MF better? Much. I no longer need to convince subordinates to nag in dick-kukevo on weekends for just a thank you from me. Or to convince a colleague that we simply cannot raise wages without changing the position ... And what for those pennies that he gets, one must also try. What's with the rest? I think they will leave sooner or later, the youth that they recruited in 2014 for lower positions have already gained enough experience, and now they will disperse to new companies. And MegaFon? MegaFon will be agonizing for a long time and hard, if suddenly someone from above does not take away from the tits of consulting agencies ... and at least not for a long time will see the light.

Probably not only in MegaFon, but I don’t know about others. And there will be more accidents, many more, and with even greater consequences. Because the runner is saving on his feet ... the runner is not for long.

Millions of people are faced with the consequences of a technological accident today. There was a serious malfunction in the work of one of the operators of the Big Three.

Subscribers of "Megafon" suffered in Moscow and the region, in Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Ryazan and other cities of the center of Russia. People were not just left without communication - bank services, taxi and delivery services worked intermittently. Megafon has millions of subscribers in the capital region alone, which makes it possible to judge the scale of the problem.

This is what the shutdown of cellular communications can turn into in the modern world: no calls, no SMS, no pictures on social networks.

The rolling blackouts began at about 11 Moscow time. And at first, judging by the messages on the forums on the Internet, it seemed that the network disappeared at once from all major telecom operators. It soon became clear that the blow fell only on the clients of Megafon and Iota. Doesn't catch in the center of Moscow. Without communication, the whole of Central Russia, the Volga region. The disconnection almost instantly affected five million SIM cards.

Lucky for those who have the Internet - messengers work, but only emergency calls. However, the call center of the Ministry of Emergency Situations does not come out on the first try. Those who have no network at all on the screen today had to rely on a landline telephone and good luck.

Taxi drivers were left without work - nowadays all orders are via the mobile Internet. Customers could not get through to beauty salons, for example. Daily revenue was at stake.

Left without a connection, the owners of Megafon's SIM cards began to call the call center, but it turned out that the lines were overloaded. The most impatient, who built their entire business on calls, changed their telecom operator in the afternoon. Who could wait - stormed the offices of "Megafon". All, of course, with the same questions - when will the connection be returned, how to call until then.

“It so happened that Megafon was the only one working for me all day, and the Internet and calls worked without any problems. I just gave my phone to those subscribers who urgently needed to make calls, because many were in a critical situation, ”says Polina Solovieva.

At the operator's headquarters, at first they kept silence, on a page on the social network they unsubscribed about a 30 percent drop in communication. But after a cloud of comments with the righteous anger of customers, Megafon had to announce a massive collapse. Already in the evening, the operator's office in the capital officially commented on the disappearance of the connection. Turns out the underlying software has broken.

“This is the most serious accident in the history of the company in terms of impact on the network. Failure occurred in software. It erroneously gives out a constant peak load by itself, which, in fact, the network cannot withstand, "said Petr Lidov, director of public relations at Megafon.

They say that American equipment suppliers have woken up and are already involved in the repair. Megafon promises to restore the network in the next few hours. Well, as for the version that there is no connection due to the consequences of a hacker attack on the operator - after all, Megafon suffered from the WannaCry virus a week ago, the headquarters say that the ransomware Trojan has nothing to do with it.

Not so long ago, a global failure occurred in the entire network system, which took a long time to fix the problems. However, subscribers often observe difficulties in which Megafon does not work today in 2020. In specific cases, there may be a lack of Internet access, loss of connection with all subscribers (including other operators), inability to use various services and much more. It is possible to solve the problem on your own only in cases where its appearance depended on the subscriber himself. In other situations, specialist advice is required.

If the subscriber discovers any problems in the network, there are probably several different reasons, depending on what kind of failure occurred and in what category of communication. They can be conditionally divided into the following groups:

Calls. In this case, it is possible for the user to be outside the network access zone, that is, in areas where there is no operator coverage. Also, technical failures of the device or the company itself are likely.
Internet. It is also likely that there is a lack of coverage, service congestion or internal problems with the global network.
SMS. The instant messaging service can also malfunction. Often they are associated with internal system problems, the lack of messages in the package (for tariffs with a subscription fee), as well as funds on the balance.

In some cases, there may be difficulties with the use of specialized services of the company (television, official application, etc.). It is possible to solve problems with communication Megafon today 2020 independently (in the settings) or with the help of company representatives with a personal appeal or by calling the contact center.

Communication problems Megafon today

Lack of connection or poor quality is often likely to occur when there is a problem with the network itself. In such cases, two reasons are most likely:

preventive maintenance (temporary, as a rule, these works are notified in advance);
infection of servers with a computer virus (in practice, it was encountered several times).

Nowadays, difficulties with communication arise quite rarely. Sometimes during the holidays (in particular, New Years), they are caused by excessive network congestion. But the problem is also temporary and does not need to be resolved.

No connection Megafon today

A complete lack of communication may indicate probable problems:

Being out of the access zone. Problems often occur when traveling in another region. To avoid them, it is recommended to find out the information about the availability of coverage in advance.
Internal breakdown of the phone. As a rule, this concerns damage to the SIM card slot, modem or antenna.
Breakdown of access points. In such cases, the tower, which provides communication in a specific area, probably does not work. You can check this information by calling or sending an online application to the customer support center.

You should also find out information about possible breakdowns or maintenance work in the customer support center. However, in such cases, you should be prepared for the fact that network congestion and busyness will not allow you to quickly find out what is with Megafon connection today.

What are the problems with Megaphone today

The company provides classic services, as well as high-speed Internet throughout Russia. Every year the coverage areas in the regions are growing, and the organization itself is developing and improving the services provided. However, until now, far from all cities there is an LTE connection, in some there are no towers - access points. It is possible to solve this problem with the user's request. In other cases, 2G and 3G connections are usually connected, which function almost everywhere. If they are not connected too, it is necessary to check the operability of the operated device and its antenna. You should also pay attention to the communication indicator, which shows the distance of the nearest tower from the subscriber.

There is another problem, also related to the presence of towers. It consists in the frequent congestion of the network, which does not allow its full use. In such cases, an extension of coverage is also required.

Communication works poorly - what to do?

First of all, if Megaphone does not work, you need to find out the nature of the malfunctions. Often, the company notifies about probable failures on the official pages in social networks, as well as using SMS messages. You can also call the hotline to clarify this issue.

If the reasons lie not in connection failures, it is recommended to carry out the following operations with the phone:

restart the device;
pull out the SIM card and re-insert it into the slot;
move the SIM card to another device (thus, it is possible to find out the possible presence of a breakdown in the phone);
configure the network manually (select an operator and connection type: 2G, 3G or 4G).

As a rule, at least one of the suggested methods works.

Why 3G and 4G Megafon does not work

Separate access towers are responsible for the 3G and LTE (4G) network. And if, when using this particular coating, Megafon does not work today, two reasons for the phenomenon are most likely (in addition to a malfunction of the equipment):

absence of a subscriber in the coverage area;
malfunctions in the operation of the towers.

If you were able to successfully use the services in the territory earlier, the most likely reason is a technical failure of coverage. In this case, information about the malfunction should be reported to the contact center or chat with a specialist.

SMS does not work on Megafon: what to do?

First of all, you need to check the status of the balance or the presence of SMS in the purchased message package (if any). If resources are not available in both cases, the message cannot be sent. To resume using them, you will need to top up your account or purchase an additional service package.

Other possible reasons include:

Incorrect entry of the SMS center number. It is necessary to check the correctness of the recorded number and the presence of +7 or 8 at its beginning (the number must be 11-digit).
A ban on sending instant messages is enabled. To deactivate the service, dial * 330 * 111 #.
Restrictions or problems with the phone. In this case, you should check the SIM card on another phone, or reboot your own.

If, in terms of sending SMS, Megafon still does not work today, it is recommended to contact the support service. It is available via the hotline number, technical support, and online chat on the company's website.

conclusions

Despite the constant expansion of the network's capabilities, communication problems continue to appear and recur for most of the mobile operator's subscribers. But not always the cause of the malfunction lies in the incorrect operation of the services, and often technical failures of the user's device, zero balance, or the presence of the subscriber outside the coverage area become prerequisites for this. In all cases, it is possible to solve the problem of restoring a high-quality connection, but for this it is necessary to correctly establish the cause of its deterioration.