By KHRISNA VIRGIL
kvirgil@tribunemedia.net
AS investigations continued into the worst telecommunications shut down ever experienced in the Bahamas, BTC officials did not rule out sabotage as a possible cause.
BTC insiders, who contacted The Tribune yesterday, found it strange that the countrywide breakdown should occur on the day that Tony Rice, Cable and Wireless Communication's London-based CEO, arrived for sensitive talks with Prime Minister Perry Christie. Mr Christie had pledged during last month's election campaign that he would "explore all lawful means" by which to restore majority ownership of BTC to "the government and the Bahamian people."
Although the Prime Minister and Mr Rice met on Monday, no BTC executive was prepared to comment on the meeting.
In appointing his cabinet, Mr Christie took responsibility for Government's relations with BTC. It is now in the portfolio of the Office of the Prime Minister.
At the time Opposition Leader Dr Hubert Minnis called Mr Christie's statement "reckless".
He thought it a "dangerous, irresponsible statement for the prime minister to make unless BTC is up for sale and the prime minister has a magic wand and finds all the extra funds to purchase BTC."
However, commenting on Monday's shutdown, Marlon Johnson, Company Brand and Communications Vice President, said BTC will not pigeon hole itself in regards to what could have caused the breakdown.
"Our position," he said, "is the same since yesterday (Monday). We are doing our investigations with an open mind to any and all potential causes of what happened. No option will be overlooked or understated as we do what we can to make sure this does not happen again.
"Our customers should know, however, that today (Tuesday) is a better day for us.
"While there may still be one or two issues lingering, by and large we have restored services to the lion's share of our customers."
CWC became BTC's parent company after a hotly contested and debated privatisation undertaking in April 2011.
Just hours after BTC had started restoring service to its customers on Monday, executives called a press conference to announce that the company would consider various options as a means of compensation for its landline, 249,000 prepaid and 47,000 postpaid customers.
CEO Geoff Houston said: "We are looking at all options to ensure that we actually give back to our customers."
BTC officials also apologised for the pain that customers went through, but said the outage was not due to its system upgrades.
"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.
"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," Mr Houston said.
Comments
Puzzled 11 years, 10 months ago
I am surprised that there is no talk in the media up until now of industrial sabotage at BTC. There are certainly a number of people on the street speaking about the possibility. Given the vehemence of the union's opposition to the sale, the PLP's promise to pursue all avenues to regain control of BTC and the Minister's naming BTC as a company that has too many ex-pat employees. Add to this a number of disenchanted employees and ex employees I believe the Minister of Labour and National Insurance is an ex employee. Might explain his interest!) and you have motives and opportunity for mischief. The unexpected large majority that the PLP now have in Parliament together with statements from various Ministers must have empowered the PLP supporters who must now think that they should be rewarded and can do no wrong. One way to hasten regaining of majority control of BTC would be to make the company worth less to CWC. So reduce public confidence in BTC to the point where CWC gives in and then once control has been gained, delay the introduction of competition so that a government controlled BTC retains a monopoly as in days gone by. It is surely not a coincidence that the BTC network troubles have escalated since the PLP election win.
As far as CWC giving up the 2% to the government, I imagine that they do not see this as an option. Who would invest millions in a project and then allow a team of Government appointees to run the project! CWC would just sell their whole holding back to the government for what was paid out plus the hundreds of millions that have been poured into the company already to try to drag it into line with the rest of the world. The reason it was so far behind other countries even locally is because it was a Government run monopoly. So why do we want go back to that? I do not think that we have to look far past the Cabinet for the answer to that.
242 11 years, 10 months ago
Good points
positiveinput 11 years, 10 months ago
It is surely not a coincidence that the BTC network troubles have escalated since the PLP election win. Yes it could be sabotage but you said it yourself "troubles have escalated". What happens when you dont fix a problem. Come on you said it before, it whats, E S C A L A T E S. Why not assume that the new owners themselves are in too deep. CWC is happy you guys pointing fingers for them but knowing the faults origin. Thank goodness its just a 4G cause I hate to see the glitches that comes with 10G upgrade lol.
mynameis 11 years, 10 months ago
To your last question: We want to go back because our jingoism cannot tolerate the thought that just maybe we are not as fantastic as we think we are.
JohnBrown 11 years, 10 months ago
As substantiated above, I do believe that this first phone outage is the beginning of many to come. And don't forget the looting and vanderlism that will follow as crime escalates when both the electricity and phone line are placed together in suspended animation. How about outages for a a few days next time or untill CWC is willing to cut their loses and run? We'll be back at square one with Mr Christie shouting joyfully, "I told you, I promised you, I was going to get it back and now I've got it for you my people, my dearly beloved unemployed, disfunctional Bahamins."
Out of the frying pan and into the fire once again... going out the world backwards like we did when we first came here. Big disgrace...
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