Major problems at Dutch incumbent KPN internet services left subscribers to the company’s IPTV platform in the dark for most of Friday.
By Saturday morning, about 10% of the operator’s TV viewers were still without a signal, but KPN said it is now uploading new firmware for the IPTV set-tops, and service should be restored later that day.
Problems started in the morning of Friday, November 20, when a major outage at the company’s web services made internet access, telephony and IPTV reception impossible. With regards to the TV service, KPN has around 1.8 million IPTV customers and claims to be the second largest provider of TV services in the country.
When KPN fixed its internet problems, the IPTV set-tops failed to be identified by the system and were not able to log on again to the service. With the firmware update the problem should be solved and during Friday evening about 90% of all IPTV customers had a signal.
Answering criticism about the way the operator handled the problems, KPN said it will improve communication to its customers. The operator also said that viewers could access the catch-up TV service at no cost during the next seven days. KPN is also offering three on-demand movies free of charge.
Because of the number of homes affected by the outage, viewing figures for all Dutch TV channels were lower than usual. RTL4’s The Voice of Holland attracted just 1.8 million viewers, compared with 2.4 million the previous week.
Dutch broadcaster SBS6 decided to stream its major Friday evening show Masterminds live on the internet to enable KPN customers to see the programme.
