For 7 hours today the entire country was again electronically stranded with no internet and email after BTL's internet service collapsed due to another break in the ARCOS-1 submarine fiber optic cable. The break, which occurred between Miami and the Bahamas, caused the system collapse at around 10:30 this morning and left the entire country offline until 4:30 this afternoon. After the collapse, BTL fast-tracked the groundwork to physically connect with TelMex in Mexico using fiber optic cable on the MAYA-1 route. But before that could be done, ARCOS-1 was back online. If you are saying that there's no way this could happen again...well BTL's manager of sales and marketing Karen Bevans says her company feels the same way.
Karen Bevans, BTL Sales and Marketing Manager
"Quite frankly we are saying the same thing, how could this have happened again? Unfortunately it's a little beyond our control. Its ARCOS fiber cable but again being in a situation like this…ARCOS is redundant; it's a ring so that if a cut happens on one side, maybe north, the traffic goes south. Having a situation like that you would that that is enough backup for the country of Belize. Similar to that we have a situation like that heading to Belmopan, we have a fiber cable and as a backup we have radio links. We don't expect that two of them will be down at the same time. Anyway since we learnt our lesson from couple weeks ago, as we came back, as we got back service we began talks with TelMex. TleMex was in the process of trying to expand the capacity to accommodate BTL and that is where we are this point. But fortunately again, they were advanced in it and we were able to just quickly begin the physical connections this morning. By this evening we would have expected that things would have been back to normal but the ARCOS is now back up and we are happy to say that service is restored."
Keith Swift,
Is all your are telling your customers is well 'we are sorry' and it won't happen again? Is that all you are going to give your customers?
Karen Bevans,
"Usually if service is interrupted and it's totally beyond the control of BTL there are no liabilities involved and this is the same situation in this case. We try to mention that to our customers and of course we publicize in our telephone directory because there will, there are things that will happen that will be beyond our control. We don't act independently; we partner with international partners, with international carriers, but again we do our part and we make sure that everything is being satisfied on this side in Belize and we work so closely with them that we get quick response. But we publicize it to the customers we ask for their patience. As it happened this morning we quickly sent out a notice, informed our major customers, and we are aware of the inconvenience. We ourselves go through a lot of inconvenience but we ask for patience, for cooperation, and the business customers themselves know that in business there are some things that are beyond your control."
We note that while internet and email were down, BTL was able to reroute international voice traffic using the earth station in Belmopan. And when BTL's network collapsed, so did the countrywide ATM network at First Caribbean International Bank. Two weeks ago the bank's customers were similarly inconvenienced when they were unable to access their money at the ATM due to the BTL collapse. So how could this happen again to First Caribbean? Manager of Corporate Banking Glen Smith says they were working on a solution.
Glen Smith, Manager of Corporate Banking - FCIB
"Internally we were not able to put any alternative system in place that can handle the ABM traffic for the simple reason that it was too soon after the last one. We've only had a window of two weeks and its difficult to try to fix anything in only two weeks."
At newstime the bank's 5 ATM machines were back in service.