Almost half of Israel's population was left without mobile phone services on December 1 after the country's biggest operator was hit by a massive network outage. Cellcom said the crash meant its 3.3 million customers, roughly 44 percent of Israel's population, were left without mobile services from 10 am (0800 GMT). By 6:30 pm (1430 GMT), the system was still not back up.
Seven hours into the outage, Cellcom director Amos Shapira held a press conference on what he called "the biggest crisis in the history of the company," founded in 1994. "Hundreds of our company's engineers and employees are working to put an end to this outage as soon as possible," he said.