CSL and Citic linked to troubled Occupy Central 'referendum'
Two companies identified by industry sources after voters in Occupy Central poll on electoral reform struggle to get text messages through
CSL was the telecommunications company hired by the University of Hong Kong to support a New Year's Day "referendum" on electoral reform that was plagued by technical problems.
Three industry sources identified CSL as the company involved, while two of the sources said Citic Telecom International, which runs the server that acts as a gateway for text messages sent between different phone networks, may also have been responsible for some people being unable to cast votes.
"Too many [text] messages came in and Citic's gateway could not handle them in time," one source said.
Questioned about its involvement in the poll, CSL would not confirm that it was the company working with HKU, but said it had "prepared sufficient network bandwidth for the voting".
Citic said it had not been told the details of the poll in advance, meaning it was caught by surprise by the volume of text messages to one number.
Some 62,169 people voted in the poll, commissioned by organisers of the Occupy Central pro-democracy movement, through a smartphone application, on the internet or via a polling station in Victoria Park.
To authenticate their identities, online voters had to enter their full Hong Kong identity card number. They then received a text message with an authentication code that they had to send by text to a CSL server.