Globe Telecom Y2K rollover a success

Globe Telecom said it passed the Year 2000 rollover on the midnight of Dec. 31, 1999 successfully. As of 12:01 a.m. of Jan. 1 and thereafter, all of the telecommunications company's systems and operations were online and running smoothly.

These included the systems identified by the company as critical to its operations: billing, finance management, procurement, carrier connectivity and network maintenance.

With all its systems running smoothly, Globe Telecom declared "business as usual" at noon of Jan. 3, which was the first working day of the new millennium.

"We did it! Globe Telecom has prevailed over the Y2K bug!" said assistant vice president for information systems and Y2K project director Fernando Teodoro.

"Our Y2K program was two years in the making and we are glad that all our efforts and preparations were successful in seeing our company through the Y2K transition," he said.

Teodoro reported that Globe Telecom experienced a surge in calls and text messages during the rollover but said that this was normal and expected by the company.

"The huge volume of calls and text messages were due to people greeting each other during the New Year. This resulted in high levels of traffic but this tapered off a few hours after midnight," he said.

Atty. Rodolfo Salalima, Globe Telecom senior vice president for corporate affairs and regulatory matters, added that the Y2K experience gave the firm the "opportunity to have a new appreciation of our critical business processes."

"We'd like to thank our customers for the confidence they showed us in our preparation for Y2K," he said.

With Globe Telecom's successful rollover, Salalima assures subscribers that the company's service "is unhampered and continued at the same high level of quality that they enjoyed before the transition."

"We are happy to announce that our subscribers can continue to make their calls or text and not experience any problems or glitches related to Y2K problems," he said.

During the rollover, Globe Telecom relied on its Y2K Command Control Center to monitor the status of procedures, communication among its various locations, and escalation of its processes in reaction to Y2K situations.

Part of Globe Telecom's monitoring for the rollover was establishing direct communication links with other carriers and other countries, including New Zealand which was geographically the first major country to encounter the Y2K transition.

Even after the rollover, Globe Telecom's Y2K Command Control Center continued to monitor all systems and business operations until the end of the business day on Jan. 7.

Globe Telecom also reports that preparations are under way for the Feb. 28 and 29 rollover, to make sure that its systems recognize 2000's leap year date.

Globe Telecom started its Y2K program in 1998 and achieved Y2K-readiness within schedule in June 1999. Prior to the rollover, it conducted a dry run last Dec. 9 in testing its systems against a simulated rollover.

As part of its contingency measures, Globe Telecom also performed Y2K tests of local, cellular and NDD calls in May 1999 with PLDT, Smart, BayanTel and Digitel, as well as with Islacom in November.

Globe also tested its IDD service with Singapore's Singapore Telecom last August, and its international roaming service with Australia's Telstra last October.