The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE Tribune Business Reporter nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net HAVING invested significant capital in its cellular network, the Bahamas Telecommunications Company's (BTC) vice-president of marketing, Marlon Johnson told Tribune Business the company was confident that "in a matter of months" a lot "nuisances" affecting its customers would be resolved. On Friday, the company reported that due to a fibre cut by workmen near its Prince Charles location, there had been widespread disruption to its cellular network affecting, in particular, customers in Abaco, New Providence, Eleuthera and Exuma. "It's a terrible inconvenience to our customers who would have to go the majority of the day without cellular services. It was one of those situations that was out of our control, but we have been responding to it to get it repaired," Mr Johnson told Tribune Business. "We are really refreshing our entire network, and have made significant investments in a brand new cellular network, and made significant progress bringing the NGN product, the land-line system, into full operation. We feel confident that in a matter of months a lot of these nuisance-type situations would go away. "Unfortunately, even when you have sometimes catastrophic occasions like a fibre cut, that can disrupt the services. What we are doing for that is making sure, wherever possible, that we have redundancies either on-island or off-island, and make sure that if something catastrophic happens we have something alternative to fall on. It will take some time to get the network as robust and resilient as it should be, but we're on a track to get there." BTC has invested $43 million in its new cellular network. Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) president, Winston Rolle, told Tribune Business he had not received any complaints from businesses, noting that phone services were key to their operations. "Their (BTC) ability to identify and rectify the problem is going to be the key thing," Mr Rolle said.