Cellcom CEO addresses cyber incident

NORTHEAST WIS. – Thousands of Wisconsin Cellcom customers lost their cellphone service, and possibly their patience, as Cellcom worked around the clock to recover from a cyber incident that began in mid-May.

Service between Cellcom customers reportedly had been restored last week, but voice and text service to those with a different provider remained an issue as of Memorial Day weekend.

“We are dealing with a cyber incident,” said Cellcom Chief Executive Officer Brighid Riordan in a video message. “We simply don’t have a lot of facts.”

Riordan said the family-operated business has served generations of Wisconsin customers. “This is about our community; this is not just about Cellcom. You are angry and I am, too,” Riordan said.

The company didn’t provide information on those responsible for the issue, with Riordan referring to the nondescript group as “they.”

“We live in a world where they are working on how to do damage just as hard as we are working to prevent it. This is the world we live in right now. We have notified authorities, and we have teams working around the clock.” The company’s website said it contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the cyber incident.

“You have our total commitment that we are doing everything we can along with global experts, our partners who have flown in from around the world, to get this restored,” Riordan said.

But her assurance wasn’t enough to prevent some customers from trying to switch to other providers. However, many discovered they couldn’t port a Personal Identification Number from Cellcom to another provider.

“We have not yet been able to restore the Cellcom systems needed to fully and successfully port numbers to other providers,” the company said on its website.

Cellcom said it would reimburse customers for the inconvenience of lost service by crediting future bills.

“As a gesture of accountability and appreciation, we’re covering outage-related service fees for customers who choose to stay with us. The amount will be automatically applied to a future service bill.”
In the meantime, the issue set back some people and some tasks. A reporter for the Peshtigo Times said she hoped people she had scheduled phone calls with understood the technical issue prevented her from connecting, as she didn’t have everyone’s email addresses to let them know she was having trouble getting through. Several stories have been postponed so far.

Marinette County Supervisor Hank Novak said at the Wausaukee Village Board meeting on May 19 that the outage prevented him from gathering information he hoped to present to the village trustees and administration.

In her video message, Riordan thanked customers for their patience, “To those who have said kind words, that fuels our team to work harder and [be] more dedicated [to] you. We are not taking a break. We are working 24/7.”

As of May 27 a post on the Cellcom Facebook page was released, updating customers that “Services, including inbound and outbound calling, are performing well for most customers. You may still see occasional issues as systems stabilize. If you’re having trouble, try rebooting your phone. Still need help? We’re here for you.”