The Tribune

By NATARIO MCKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) is close to completing its investigation of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company’s (BTC) summer network outage.

Stephen Bereaux, the regulator’s director of policy and regulation, told a Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants (BICA) seminar: “The work is well underway and we’re just about finished with our investigation.

“The importance of doing the investigation thoroughly is what is taking time. If this investigation goes badly for BTC, URCA would be in position to take action of some kind, and if we are to do that we have to ensure that we don’t miss anything on the way and that our views are properly considered and reasoned.”

Mr Bereaux added: “BTC has cooperated with the investigation and has provided a lot of information, which we have just about completed our internal deliberations on, so really at this stage we are preparing the relevant documentation to close off or move the investigation to the next stage.”

The June 18 and 19 network outage in question affected both BTC’s fixed and mobile networks. Mr Bereaux had noted previously that BTC had requested more time to respond to its request for preventative maintenance records.

Back in August, URCA announced it had completed the initial review in its investigation of BTC’s network outage, which was when it requested three years of preventative maintenance records from the company.

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.