TelEm Group is reporting a 100% restoration of international telecommunication service following a major outage on Ascension Day – May 29th.
The outage was caused by a faulty card on the company’s international switching equipment leaving many customers unable to make international calls, or to call UTS and landline phones from TelCell mobiles.
“Our technical staff began working on the problem as soon as it was reported last Thursday and after troubleshooting the problem they were able to reprogram the switch and re-route some of the traffic so that our customers could make calls through a temporary route,” said Chief Technical Officer (CTO) Mr. Eldert Louisa.
He said the technical staff had to resort to the temporary fix after first the primary card and then a replacement card failed, making it necessary to have a second replacement card flown in from a company depot in Curacao.
“We received the card the next day and after some fine tuning we are pleased to say everything is 100% back to normal. I am very pleased with the responsible and professional way our technical staff handled this emergency,” said Mr. Louisa.
He said now that the emergency is over, staff are preparing a detailed report on the incident to present to the Bureau of Telecommunication and Post St. Maarten (BTP).
“In the report we will inform the BTP of the actions taken and how our customers were affected by the outage. We will also inform the bureau on the steps we will be taking to mitigate against similar problems in the future,” added the Chief Technical Officer.
Mr. Louisa has meantime apologized on behalf of management and staff to all residential and business customers who were affected by the interruption in service on Ascension Day.
