PHILIPSBURG--TelEm Group is seeking an urgent meeting with uplink partner Cable & Wireless for a full account of Tuesday’s close-to-three-hour Internet outage that affected business and residential customers country-wide.
In a press statement to the media on Tuesday evening, TelEm said this was the third time this year that its Miami, Florida-based Cable & Wireless uplink partner had experienced an outage at its facility in Puerto Rico, resulting in complete interruption to TelEm Group Internet customers in St. Maarten for several hours.
“The company provides an uplink service that we totally rely on for continued service to our customers. Therefore, it is vital that everything is put in place to ensure greater reliability of our international uplink,” said TelEm Group Chief Commercial Officer (CTO) Eldert Louisa late Tuesday night.
Louisa said that although the outage had not lasted as long as the previous outage in July, the fact remained that there still had been an outage after Cable & Wireless assured in July that it had taken steps to mitigate against future outages of this kind.
“We understand that the outage was caused by a failed card on Cable & Wireless equipment in Puerto Rico. Now that service has been restored, we have requested to speak with top management for a more detailed explanation of what happened and to determine what further steps they intend to make their service more reliable,” stated Louisa.
He apologised to those affected for the inconvenience caused because of the 2:00 to 4:45pm outage. He also assured that TelEm Group management would continue to press the matter with Cable & Wireless in Miami, starting with some urgent calls to management on Wednesday.
