The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas Telecommunication's Company's (BTC) chief executive yesterday blamed an 'overwhelming congestion' on its New Providence network for its mobile service disruption issues, assuring the public the company was not "sitting on our hands".

Garfield Sinclair said in an interview with Tribune Business said BTC has been 'working like crazy' to restore service in the wake of Hurricane Dorian which he described as a 'Black Swan event'.

Acknowledging the company's mobile network had failed 'in a couple of areas' due to Hurricane Dorian, Mr Sinclair explained this ultimately resulted in rerouted customer traffic to Nassau and a congested network.

"We are working like crazy. Part of the challenge is we have experienced sort of a Black Swan event," he said.

"I'm not aware of a hurricane as big and bad as this one to have struck a series of islands. Naturally the man-made equipment that runs our business failed in a couple of areas, particularly the mobile cores on the affected areas in Abaco and Grand Bahama.

"The thing with our mobile network is that you can move traffic around, so when the core fails there, New Providence's core is what takes all of the traffic. We also provide transmission services to our competitor (ALIV). We also terminate voice services to our competitor. We are a carrier's carrier. We carry a lot of their traffic as well as our own. The congestion was overwhelming and so our customers were suffering while our competitor was able to say they were up and running, even though we were helping them carry their traffic; congesting our routes so that our customers were suffering.

"We're taking this massive beating and it frankly pisses me off that as a carrier's carrier and as a national carrier we have had to rebalance our traffic. Our cores failed and are taking the beating that we are, rightfully because our customers just expect us to be up but this manmade stuff fails."

Mr Sinclair assured that the company was doing everything in its power to rectify the problem and restore service to affected areas as well as ensure the evacuation of its employees. Mr Sinclair said that while much was being made of the company's system failure, "it is not because we have been sitting on our hands and starring at our naval string".

"We are trying to get to the bottom of the issue. I just want people to be clear that we are not only worrying about our customers when we talk about the network. We are a carrier's carrier," said Mr Sinclair.