The Tribune

The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) yesterday apologised after “a critical fault” on its network disrupted fixed-line and mobile voice communications throughout the weekend.

Garfield “Garry” Sinclair, BTC’s chief executive, said the company’s technicians worked with its technology suppliers and immediate parent “day and night” to restore services that also impacted its rival provider, Cable Bahamas/Aliv.

The fault meant that system connectivity between BTC and its competitors was lost, resulting in Aliv and Cable Bahamas customers being unable to call BTC clients and vice versa.

“Our New Providence node is back in service and all landline services have been restored,” Mr Sinclair said. “We sincerely apologise to our customers who were affected by an interruption in their fixed-line and mobile voice services.

“The disruption was the result of a critical fault which occurred on June 29 on our transmission ring between Grand Bahama and New Providence. Our local technical teams and international teams, inclusive of Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) and our vendor partners, worked all day and night, and the root cause of the issue was resolved earlier this morning.”

Mr Sinclair added: “While our broadband data services, Flow TV and mobile data, were not impacted by this service disruption, there were intermittent issues with BTC mobile voice services as customers were unable to reach some off-net destinations...

“We sincerely apologise again to our customers for the inconvenience, and our teams are now engaged in a comprehensive review of what occurred and to mitigate against further reoccurrences.”