KY­RON REG­IS

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

A mas­sive black­out in Cu­raçao yes­ter­day left busi­ness­es, schools and pub­lic en­ti­ties through­out T&T with­out In­ter­net con­nec­tion dur­ing the first few hours of the work­ing day.

As thou­sands across the coun­try strug­gled to con­nect with their com­put­er and cel­lu­lar de­vices, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) is­sued a state­ment in­di­cat­ed: “The prob­lem arose due to a dis­rup­tion of an in­ter­na­tion­al ca­ble link.”

Dig­i­cel brought more clar­i­ty in a state­ment it is­sued lat­er in the day.

“Last week there was a sig­nif­i­cant sub­sea fi­bre break be­tween Guade­loupe and An­tigua. This af­fect­ed some Dig­i­cel-Plus cus­tomers and, un­for­tu­nate­ly, that prob­lem is still be­ing dealt with,” said Chan­dri­ka Sama­roo, Op­er­a­tions Di­rec­tor at Dig­i­cel.

“To help main­tain con­nec­tiv­i­ty, Dig­i­cel re-rout­ed ser­vice through an al­ter­nate path via the same up­stream sup­pli­er through Cu­ra­cao. On Mon­day morn­ing, how­ev­er, there was a ma­jor is­land-wide pow­er out­age in Cu­ra­cao that dis­rupt­ed that path as well. Once that hap­pened, ser­vices here in Trinidad and To­ba­go were al­so af­fect­ed.”

Dig­i­cel said it took quick ac­tion to en­sure that its T&T cus­tomers did not en­tire­ly lose ser­vice.

Sama­roo added, “For­tu­nate­ly, this se­quence of events did not to­tal­ly in­ter­rupt ser­vice since Dig­i­cel main­tains an­oth­er lay­er of di­ver­si­ty in our net­work that sup­port­ed a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of our traf­fic. How­ev­er, the out­age did cause mas­sive amounts of con­ges­tion on both our mo­bile and fi­bre net­works.”

“To­day’s out­age has shone a light on some of the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of the in­ter­na­tion­al net­works that sup­port T&T’s traf­fic across all providers,” Sama­roo not­ed. This should be a cat­a­lyst for clos­er analy­sis, dis­cus­sion and col­lab­o­ra­tion by all in­dus­try stake­hold­ers to ad­dress this na­tion­al chal­lenge,” he added.

The in­ter­rup­tion al­so im­pact­ed Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and Grena­da. Busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty re­sponds

Busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty re­acts

Mean­while, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty re­port­ed de­clines in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and sales.

Pres­i­dent of Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (ABA) Reval Chat­ter­goon ar­gued that a les­son should be learnt from this oc­cur­rence.

He told Guardian Me­dia: “Should some­thing like this con­tin­ue to hap­pen, I would im­plore to all my mem­bers and to all of Trinidad to have a back­up plan, one that is func­tion­al.”

Ac­cord­ing to Chat­ter­goon, if this is­sue had been pro­longed for a day the loss­es would have been se­vere. The ABA Pres­i­dent re­vealed that pay­ments at the gas pumps were im­pact­ed and the out­age re­sult­ed in Linx ma­chines be­ing tem­porar­i­ly shut down.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions, First Cit­i­zens Bank said it on­ly ex­pe­ri­enced lim­it­ed dis­rup­tions and in­ter­mit­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tions is­sues. The bank not­ed: “Our core ser­vices to cus­tomers did not, how­ev­er, suf­fer any ma­jor dis­rup­tions, and we were able to con­tin­ue to serve our cus­tomers. First Cit­i­zens has ro­bust re­dun­dan­cy and busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity mea­sures in place to deal with ex­pect­ed and tem­po­rary fail­ures from our ser­vice providers.”

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Sco­tia­bank al­so is­sued a re­lease on its web­site not­ing that it will lever­age in­ter­na­tion­al con­nec­tions to safe­guard against ex­pe­ri­ences like the one that oc­curred yes­ter­day.

RBC Roy­al Bank al­so told Guardian Me­dia that since it had rig­or­ous busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity and con­tin­gency plans in place to ad­dress un­planned in­ter­rup­tions such as this, “the bank’s net­work was not im­pact­ed by to­day’s in­ter­rup­tion in in­ter­net ser­vices and we con­tin­ued to serve our clients.”

RBC in­di­cat­ed that it was able to ad­just work sched­ules for those work­ing at RBC premis­es to mit­i­gate any dis­rup­tions it may have ex­pe­ri­enced for the em­ploy­ees who were work­ing off­site.

The bank added: “We note that clients at­tempt­ing to ac­cess our dig­i­tal chan­nels would have had con­nec­tiv­i­ty is­sues em­a­nat­ing from their end as a re­sult of dis­rup­tion in ser­vice from their in­ter­net provider and oth­er af­fect­ed ser­vice providers.”

The dif­fer­ent ser­vice providers spoke out as well.

Flow is­sued a state­ment in which it apol­o­gized for the dis­rup­tion while telling cus­tomers that its in­ter­net ser­vice con­nec­tion was reestab­lished.

TSTT not af­fect­ed

Mean­while, TSTT re­vealed that it was thank­ful that it in­vest­ed in its un­der­wa­ter in­fra­struc­ture so that it was able to keep in­ter­net ac­cess to all of its fixed-line cus­tomers.

TSTT not­ed: “Over the years, TSTT has in­vest­ed mil­lions of dol­lars in ex­pand­ing our sub­sea ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide route di­ver­si­ty in the event of any break to our sub­sea net­works. These net­works con­nect us to the World Wide Web via the Unit­ed States. To­day we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the ben­e­fits of that in­vest­ment.”

How­ev­er, TSTT ad­mit­ted that be­cause of dam­age done to un­der­wa­ter ca­bles in the East­ern Caribbean, its mo­bile users ex­pe­ri­enced dif­fi­cul­ty dur­ing ear­li­er parts of the day.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly told us that her min­istry had re­ceived re­ports about stu­dents be­ing un­able to ac­cess vir­tu­al class­rooms na­tion­wide.

She re­vealed that Dig­i­cel and Flow cus­tomers seemed the worst af­fect­ed. How­ev­er, Gads­by-Dol­ly added, “Ser­vice is be­ing re­stored and it is ex­pect­ed to reg­u­lar­ize by Wednes­day.”

The out­age al­so af­fect­ed court sit­tings, which are now be­ing done vir­tu­al­ly.