Mobile phone networks collapsed under the sudden pressure of people working from home on Monday, following the Czech government’s decision to put the entire country on lock down. While employees are allowed to go to the office during the day, many companies have obeyed instructions to enable them to prevent spread of the coronavirus. The worst-hit of the networks was Vodafon, which reported difficulties in connecting calls to other networks. T-Mobile said calling was 22 percent higher on Monday than the week before while data usage was 33 percent up. To relieve pressure on the system to connect standard calls, some operators are encouraging customers to call using data applications like WhatsApp and Messenger by offering unlimited data for these applications. Data transmission networks appear to be holding up, and phone connection conditions improved on Tuesday after Vodafon technicians spent the night bolstering connections.
