tergram cannot receive verification code

News from CCTV Beijing on February 10 (Reporter Liang Shuang and Zhang Jiaqi) At 14:10 on the 10th, in response to the large-scale failure of China Unicom’s SMS, China Unicom’s official Weibo responded that due to the SMS business Growth and congestion occurred. Starting at 7:10 a.m. on February 10, some customers reported that text messages could not be received or were delayed. After emergency expansion and optimization, it returned to normal at 10:55 a.m.

However, the reporter noticed that after China Unicom’s official Weibo responded, some Unicom users were still “complaining” on the Internet. They still could not receive the verification code after 4 p.m., and their work and life were affected. At 20:00 on the 10th, China Unicom user Mr. Wang told a reporter from China Central Broadcasting Network that he still had not restored his text message function. He said that after he called China Unicom customer service, the customer service suggested restarting his phone, but he still could not receive the bank verification code after repeated operations.

Some netizens said that they could not receive the verification code after 4 p.m. (picture from the Internet)

On the morning of the 10th, some media reported that at least Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, and Shanxi Netizens in , Shandong, Inner Mongolia and other places reported that there were problems with China Unicom’s SMS service. What caused this SMS failure? Is there a compensation plan for affected users? In this regard, the reporter sent an interview outline to China Unicom. As of press time, China Unicom had not commented. In addition, the reporter called China Unicom's customer service many times. A customer service staff member said that the SMS failure reported by netizens this morning was caused by the busy system. Regarding the compensation issue raised by the reporter, the customer service staff said that they would collect the specific situation of the users and provide feedback to them.

“Due to the epidemic, you need to show the itinerary code when taking trains and buses. When I checked the itinerary code around 8:30 in the morning, I found that I never received the verification code, so I could not show the itinerary code.” On the afternoon of the 10th, Mr. Zhou, a China Unicom user, told a reporter from China Central Broadcasting Network, "In the end, I didn't even get a seat on the 9:30 train. I was very angry."

Mr. Zhou told reporters, "Afterwards, I called China Unicom's complaint phone number. The customer service said that the phone bill would be 50 yuan (the train fare was 50 yuan). Because of the text message, I couldn't get on the train and couldn't get home. The loss was not just 50 yuan, but several people around me at the train station were unable to enter the station because of the itinerary code. It wasn’t until after 11 noon that I started to receive text messages one after another.”

When Mr. Wang was operating the 114 appointment registration platform in the morning, he failed to obtain the verification code many times and was “locked” (Photo provided by Mr. Wang, the person involved)

Lu Tingjie, dean of the School of Economics and Management at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, said in an interview with a reporter from CCTV that it is still difficult to determine the specific cause of the SMS failure. However, according to China Unicom's recommendation that users turn off the VoLTE function, it can be guessed that it may be to solve the network congestion problem.

Public information shows that VoLTE, or Voice over LTE, is an IP data transmission technology that can unify data and voice services on the 4G network.

Lu Tingjie said that the original SMS and phone services were based on circuit switching, and the 4G network has evolved into a comprehensive multimedia channel based on VoLTE and data. Traditional circuit switching is like a dedicated railway line. As long as it is connected, there will be no congestion. VoLTE is a channel for traffic. Although it is more efficient and cheaper, it can also cause instantaneous channel congestion due to too much demand. .

Fu Liang, an independent telecommunications analyst, said that China Unicom’s large-scale SMS failures cannot be ruled out as problems caused by the incoordination between VoLTE functions and SMS services. Although it is the Spring Festival period, SMS services may increase, but operators have experienced massive SMS messages during "Double Eleven" and "Double Twelve", which shows that the system should be able to withstand the test.

Fu Liang believes that the operator network is a very complex and huge system, and some problems are inevitable. The key is to see whether the operator can respond quickly and solve problems immediately when problems occur.