CyTA suspends new message service after overload

THE Telecommunications Authority (CyTA) yesterday suspended the operation of its new Multimedia messaging Service (mms) following problems due to heavy usage.
The service, only introduced a week ago, was on a trial basis, providing mobile phone owners with the capability to send photos, text, sounds, colours and images to other mobiles for free.

But the popularity of the new service apparently proved too much for the system, causing capacity problems affecting its smooth operation.

In a written statement yesterday, CyTA said it had been forced to suspend the service for both CyTAGSM subscribers and users of the soEasy prepaid service.

“Due to the unexpected heavy use of the service from CyTA customers, mainly because at this point the service is offered for free, problems have appeared both in sending and receiving mms messages and in the activation of the service,” the statement said.
“The problem was made worse by attempts to resend the same message by consumers, who realised that its reception had been delayed,” CyTA added.

The authority said it would be upgrading the service immediately but that it would take around two weeks for it to be fully up and running again.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.