BTC/LIME and its problems

[mangoskin]

<span style="font-size: 17pt"><span style="font-weight: bold">Sabotage Not Ruled Out As Btc Launch Probe</span></span>.

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 &quot;explore all lawful means&quot; by which to restore majority ownership of BTC to &quot;the government and the Bahamian people.&quot;

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 &quot;reckless&quot;.

He thought it a &quot;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.&quot;

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.

&quot;Our position,&quot; he said, &quot;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.

&quot;Our customers should know, however, that today (Tuesday) is a better day for us.

&quot;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.&quot;

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: &quot;We are looking at all options to ensure that we actually give back to our customers.&quot;

BTC officials also apologised for the pain that customers went through, but said the outage was not due to its system upgrades.

&quot;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.

&quot;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.

&quot;This is not a good day for BTC, this is another one of those experiences where I think we have a lot to learn,&quot; Mr Houston said.

tribune242.com
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[mangoskin]

Re: BTC/LIME and its problems

<span style="font-size: 17pt"><span style="font-weight: bold">BTC Told 'Give Us Better Service'</span></span>.
By RASHAD ROLLE

FOLLOWING Monday's catastrophic telephone service blackout, BTC raised the possibility of compensation - but customers say all they want form the company is more reliable service.

Downtown merchants who lost business because of the disruption - which co-incided with a power blackout - say as there is no accurate way to count their losses, the best thing BTC can do is bring an end to the problems that beset the country's telephone service.

&quot;You can't really put a dollar sign on that, even though not having your phone system to run the credit cards causes people to turn away,&quot; said Jonathan Brown, manager of The Perfume Shop.

The manager of Bonneville Bones, Kent Major, said: &quot;In terms of compensation, I think you just have to get it right and provide better service.

&quot;It just feels like everything is spinning backwards. Every morning the lights and phone services are down and it is affecting businesses, but beyond fixing the issue I don't think anything else is required at this time.&quot;

Mr Flowers, from Taylor Industries Ltd, said: &quot;Our lines were down and we can't even determine how much money was lost, even though we know it affected us.

&quot;A customer - an electrician - came in screaming because he couldn't make any money because people couldn't reach him.

&quot;We even had to turn down customers because our credit card system was down.&quot;

Carson Hepburn said: &quot;All I'm asking is for them to get the system up and running. Put the company in a position where they don't have so many problems - that's all I want.&quot;

Speaking under condition of anonymity, one shop employee said: &quot;The new owners came on stream promising a lot. They promised to lower rates yet not only have the rates remained the same but minutes can't be used since the phone services are down. How does one justify this?&quot;

Aneka, an employee of United Colours of Benetton, agreed that it is difficult to determine how much money was lost.

She added: &quot;It's unfair - when the phones are down you can't get business, but when they are up, you get a bill.&quot;

One downtown worker, Tanya, pointed to another way BTC could compensate customers - &quot;free phone services for a month&quot;.

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