Pond Island – At approximately midnight, Saturday, TelEm Group technicians assigned to the company’s Outside Plant and Switching Departments successfully completed repairs to faulty equipment affecting customer lines in the Philipsburg area.
As of Sunday, all affected PBX landlines, internet service, ATM and credit card telecommunication services were once again fully operational.
The company will continue to monitor the repairs for the next few days as a precautionary measure.
TelEm Group technicians have been troubleshooting a problem reported on the company’s telecommunication network from Wednesday last week while residential and business lines in the Philipsburg area were being transferred to the company’s new CS2K softswitch.
Upon attempting to reconnect subscriber lines on to one part of the network equipment, the lines would not respond as expected to programming protocols. Instead, the lines and equipment would only operate intermittently.
Several attempts to correct the problems on Thursday and Friday proved unsatisfactory and a decision was taken Saturday to re-assess the situation and better identify the faulty equipment.
By systematically going through a process of elimination the technical staff identified three main issues which contributed to the failure of the equipment and affected the programming protocols and ultimately service to customers. These included:
1) An issue with the programming for PBX equipment of customers.
2) A faulty card on a vital piece of telecommunication hardware.
3) Feedback on subscriber lines causing loss of voice quality.
TelEm Group technicians worked diligently from Friday evening until the early hours Sunday morning to carry out the necessary repairs which had affected some key TelEm Group customers since Wednesday of last week.