By CELESTE NIXON
Tribune Staff Reporter
cnixon@tribunemedia.net
BTC will consider various options in a bid to compensate customers that were affected by the nation-wide disruption in service, which CEO Geoff Houston said was the worst crash of his 25 years in the industry.
Only a few days after promising there would be no more large interruptions, BTC called a press conference yesterday to apologise and say the company recognises it will be a challenge to recover the faith and confidence of its customers, but said they are “absolutely committed” to the modernisation of BTC and will be exploring all forms of compensation.
Mr Houston said: “We are looking at all options to ensure that we actually give back to our customers.
“We do recognise the pain that our customers are going through – we are going to take stock and decide how to move forward with our customers in terms of compensation and any other promotions.”
The morning outage that disabled BTC services throughout the Bahamas for hours yesterday had nothing to do with the upgrades to the network, Mr Houston said.
He added that while it is too early to determine the actual cause of the event, the matter will be investigated and all measures, including investing further in the network if necessary, will be taken to avoid another outage.
Mr Houston said: "We are working hard to upgrade all of our core infrastructure, we are working very hard to bring what we consider a much better network experience to all customers certainly events like this don't help us.
“This I can say from my 25 plus years in the industry an outage of this magnitude is the most significant I have ever experienced and certainly it is questioning a lot, in terms of our network, and what we need to do to continue to fix our underlying issues.
“This is not a good day for BTC, this is another one of those experiences where I think we have a lot to learn.
“We are going to learn very quickly from this exercise and we are going to learn very quickly from whatever the investigation throws up and we are going to do whatever we can to make sure it does not happen again.”
According to Antonio Stubbs, senior vice-president of technical services, some 350,000 pre-paid and post paid customers were affected by the interruption in service.
He said up to yesterday afternoon the corporation was still in restoration mode, with broadband services coming back online late yesterday morning and hoping to have enterprise customers restored by late afternoon and all services running normally today.
While the corporation has yet to speak with BEC, Mr Stubbs said they will be reviewing BTC network and power system and making sure that the new generation network, which will be installed over the next few months, is equipped with the proper resiliency to ensure that mass outage will not be repeated.
"Hopefully in the very near future we won't see these type of outages in our network,” he said.
Comments
sansoucireader 11 years, 10 months ago
"Houston, we have a problem" (from 1955 movie Apollo 13).
John 11 years, 10 months ago
It is apparent, at least to me ,that BTC has no back- up plan or contingency plans for when their services are interrupted and its customers will always be lft with handsets that say "sorry no service' or "no network available." Not tech savvy but i am sure that there is a means where BTC can upgrade its systems without causing mass outages to most of its customers, or ones that lasts for more than an hour or two. Restoration work can be scheduled for off hours to minimise interruptions. Even BTC's marketing plan is like a chicken without a head because them seem uncertain as many of their marketing plans seem to overlap and even contridict each other. They have phone card vendors and top up vendors selling their product below cost and seems to want to offer no relief to them. but competition will come..competition will come as soon as 2013
concernedcitizen 11 years, 10 months ago
FIRST THERE UPGRADING A ANTIQUE SYSTEM AND SECOND COMPITION WILL COME IF PM PGC DOESN,T MESS W/ THE DEAL
positiveinput 11 years, 10 months ago
Their exact term was ripping out an old platform to install a new one. So I'm wondering if this new platform is being installed, whats with the malfunctions already. Orrrr is it this platform is only NEW to the Bahamas.
spoitier 11 years, 10 months ago
Didn't read you post before I post mines but you're pretty much right.
242 11 years, 10 months ago
Sabotage?
proudloudandfnm 11 years, 10 months ago
This will probably happen alot more int he next few years. Imagine what they have to replace, repair, re-build, buy, re-program, re-train and build to get BTC up to speed after so many decades of gvoernment neglect and poor management. Imagine the effort just to get the staff up to date and motivated. BTC was run by our government since inception and we all know how bad our government is at running things.
I actually feel for the guys from Bluewater, I can't imagine the mess they walked into when they bought BTC!
positiveinput 11 years, 10 months ago
Stop imagining cause BTC sure wasn't bought off ebay. They knew just what they were getting into cause no one with a business head makes a blind purchase. You have the nerve to comment on the government runned staff, yet still mentioned how present staff needs to be updated and motivated, so wheres the difference. Why motivate someone to do their job; their pay should be all the motivation they need. Hope you dont work there cause you probably want a tip somehow if you're just a directory assistant. Then some of you talk about selling Bahamasair, guest then their disruption would be a plane crash, but because the flights leave on time and no baggage was lost, that would be another good sale. You got an upgrade on technology, thick, but all this islandwide failure shows what in dependabiliby.
concernedcitizen 11 years, 10 months ago
IF THIS WAS SABOTAGE ,THE PEOPLE SHOULD BE CHARGED WITH TREASON ,,,WE CAN NOT SURVIVE WITH OUT DFI ....PM PGC IT MAY PLAY GOOD TO YOUR SUPPORTERS TO STRONG ARM CWC BUT HOW DOES IT LOOK TO OUTSIDE INVESTORS ,,IS THIS HOW YOU LOOK OUT FOR THE SMALL MAN CHASING AWAY FORIEGN INVESTMENT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
auditor 11 years, 10 months ago
Fellow Bahamians, is it just me, or do we need more choices for our utilities? Both BEC and BTC need serious competition to become reliant. We need to fully open up the market for other service providers. Island-wide outages are unacceptable in this day and age.
We say we have infrastructure, but what infrastructure?
It should be a matter of "who is the best telephone service provider or who is the best choice for electricity?" NOT "you take what you get" WE CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS!
concernedcitizen 11 years, 10 months ago
TRUE TALKS AUDITOR
leeza 11 years, 10 months ago
There is more going here than meets the eye. Stay Tuned it will all come to a head soon enough
nyandorot 11 years, 10 months ago
Our lack of foresight where we only have one mobile company and one Cable company. Add competition and this will stop like in other countries.
Why do we suffer from amnesia when it comes to competition?? Why wait years to have more than one mobile company?? If we do then dont compain if BTC cannot be reliable.
spoitier 11 years, 10 months ago
This will be a definite problem with only one company, because big companies always want to have more than one provider especially for internet, it is what they call peering because if you have two provider and one goes down the other will carry the load in the mean time. I guess if BEC goes down like they always do it probably will take both providers down anyway, but on a series note COB will probably need this to help them with university status, especially if they want to recruit students from around the world.
John 11 years, 10 months ago
What does the scriptures have to say about all this: something to the effect that there will come a time when governments around the world will fail their people. They will be unable to meet the everyday damands of their citizens. Basic essentials like electricity, phone services, water, road (building) and other essential services will fail. Food will be in short supply (where is City Markets?) Many governments will also experience deep financial woes..sounds familiar? ( what is the national debt of the Bahamas? and what is the current fiscal deficit? does it ring a bell for... the USA? the Bahamas? Greece, other European nations? Even Switzerland experiencing financial problems And things are not going to get better, they are going to get worse..yes even crime..and what will this be a sign of? a sign that the end of this world as we know it is near..we are at the end of this earth's history..watch the changing weather patterns.dont just read your bible...experience it! John 3:16
spoitier 11 years, 10 months ago
It is call a cutover, when someone is moving from one network to another the first thing have to be done is testing the new network to make sure it works properly that is all circuit is functioning on the new network and then the cutover should be done in a time that won't really hurt business so I would say late at night or after normal business hours. A backout plan should be instituted in case something goes bad, which is the new circuit wouldn't come up for some reason, the backout plan should always be to revert back to the old system if it is taking to long. During the actual cutover they should have a few connects to move over from the old to the new maybe in this case it is a little different but that is pretty much the case and point, now once everything is move over from the old to the new it should come up and if it doesn't in the alloted time then go back to the old system and investigate the problem with new network before trying again at another time. It sound like we have bad project management (lack of planning)here as well as bad engineers and technicians.
ghost 11 years, 10 months ago
You have to face it, this is a 3rd World country and it has the network to prove it! Local power failed not BTC's problem but due to old equipment and bad maintenance the generators failed hence the blackout. old equipment doesn't like loss of power and takes time to recover.
PLP just need to open the doors for other providers to make a foot print in the bahamas bringing cheaper mobile costs and much needed jobs.
concernedcitizen 11 years, 10 months ago
THE FNM ALREADY OPENED THE DOOR FOR COMPITION BTC, MONOPOLY ENDS IN 2013 / I THINK/
pfunkf 11 years, 10 months ago
could this be a case of industrial sabotage carried out by both utility unions.could it also be they are conspiring with the government to give c and w a black eye in the court of public opinion.remember,this company was threatened by the plp while in opposition and the unions that the deal would not be allowed to stand.don't forget blue water[the ghost company] have not given up,and could now be making moves to run c & w out of town.what better time than now?
concernedcitizen 11 years, 10 months ago
DON,T FORGET SHAME GIBSON STANDING UP IN THE HOUSE AND SAYING WE WILL PUT A TAX ON CELL PHONE USAGE IF CWC DONS,T DO WHAT THEY WANT ,,THE ONLY THING PGC CAN GIVE THEM TO GET MAJORITY BACK IS A LONGER MONOPOLY ,,BOTH MEAN HIGHER RATES TO US ,,THIS IS NO WAY TO TREAT A INVESTOR BUT THEIR UNEDUCATED SUPPORTORS LOVE THE WHIP THE FORIEGNER ,WHITEY ,ROUTINE EVEN IF IT TAKES US RIGHT TO THE POOR HOUSE ,,IF I WAS A FORIEGNER AND SAW THIS I WOULD LET MY MONEY SIT IN ONE OF OUR BANKS GETTING RESONABLE INTEREST BEFORE I INVEST IN ANY THING HERE
pfunkf 11 years, 10 months ago
The Grandmaster of shamelessness and potcake boy who gone to BEC,they gat a slick game going on them jackasses.bet you they building up their personal wealth big time, all that nationalist talk they always flipin off their tongue sure making some black bahamians head dizzy.Foreigners investors are not buying that foolishness.in fact i think they laughing at how potcake brain so many of us are. An old Grand Master once told me that money goes where money lie,figure that out.
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