By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

BTC said yesterday that unspecified “technical failures” were the cause of a nearly 24-hour disruption in land line, mobile and internet services this weekend.

According to the company’s Public Relations Manager Jerome Sawyer, teams were immediately deployed after BTC began to notice disruptions across all the network platforms – land line, mobile and internet – around 1:30am Saturday.

“Teams were immediately deployed to try and determine the cause and to begin repairs and restoration. Technicians were able to restore a significant amount of land line and internet connectivity by early morning. However, mobile presented more serious challenges,” the release said.

“Updates were released throughout the day as work progressed. BTC mobilised its full technical team to resolve the issue, and was able to call on dozens of resources from its partner venders to assist in the resolution. By early afternoon, services had been restored to BTC’s postpaid customer base. By 4:30pm, services began to return to the prepaid customers.”

According to a statement from the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC), full service would be restored by 8:30pm Saturday. However, customers were still complaining on BTC’s Facebook page on Sunday that their services were still down. Some persons even mentioned that their “minutes” had also disappeared off their cell-phones during the blackout.

One person wrote: “I had my data turned on yesterday, today when you bring the system up it just was gone! Please can I have my data back or my money because I already turned it on. This is ridiculous! I can’t wait for the competition to arrive. This is foolishness. I have two cell phones and I can’t use my cell which is a post paid which you advertised as bigger and better, and my land line is dead. If I had an emergency and had to call an ambulance or 911 then what?! You need to get it together.”

Another person wrote: “Anytime something goes wrong with your service you make the same excuse ‘it happens all over the world’. Just because it happens other places does not mean it is right. Remember we are paying customers. Your service is not free or inexpensive. We are not begging for anything but please own up to your mistakes BTC reps. Have a good evening.”

BTC said the company will provide some measure of compensation for the inconvenience and will announce those details in the coming days.