The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

UTILITIES Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) executives said yesterday that the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) had requested more time to respond to its request for preventative maintenance records, adding that it was pursuing the the investigation into the company’s network outage as “assiduously as we can”.

URCA’s director of policy and regulation, Stephen Bereaux, said: “The BTC outages are being very actively investigated by URCA.

“That investigation has required, and is continuing to require, BTC to produce a significant volume of information for us. The last information requested asked for 24 separate pieces of information from BTC, and they have requested some more time to respond to it.

“URCA has responded positively to their request in that we felt that it is not unreasonable, and they have asked us at this stage [to wait] until September 24. We are pursing this as assiduously as we can. There is a lot of information to be considered and a lot to be provided by BTC. We are content that they have so far been cooperating fully.”

URCA announced earlier this month that it had completed its initial review in its investigation of BTC’s June network outage, and had also requested three years of preventative maintenance records from the company. The June 18 and 19 network outage affected both BTC’s fixed and mobile networks.

URCA said the report submitted by BTC had initially pointed to system failures associated with the company’s emergency back-up power supply for its Technical Complex, following the loss of commercial power on the stated dates.

The regulator had requested additional information and sought clarification on key issues. BTC has been asked to provide preventative maintenance records for the period 2009-2012 for specified facilities and emergency response services, in addition to alarm and fault records for various power systems and equipment. URCA submitted its request to BTC on August 16, 2012, and had given BTC 14 calendar days to meet its request.

Mr Bereaux also told Tribune Business that the communications regulator still has plans to assess whether or not it should license and regulate Bahamas-based satellite TV providers.

“It is something we have planned to look at but we haven’t yet begun that work. We expect we will begin it in our next planning cycle, which is 2013,” Mr Bereaux said.