TelEm Group will be making adjustments to company switching equipment from Midnight tonight to accommodate necessary changes for adoption of the ongoing North America Numbering Plan (NANP) system.
As a result of these adjustments all landline services operated by TelEm Group will be interrupted from midnight Wednesday until 5.00 am Thursday morning.
TelEm Group says the work on company equipment represents one of the final physical changes that will take place within TelEm Group before NANP is fully implemented for Country St. Maarten.
TelEm Group NANP coordinator and Network Engineer, Mr. Donville Hodge, says once the latest adjustments are made, the company’s CS2K softswitch will be properly configured to convert calls received using the +59954X-XXXX and +172154X-XXXX and terminate these calls into the company landline network.
He said a similar exercise will later take place after making similar adjustments to the company’s mobile network.
According to Mr. Hodge this is another major milestone in the complete implementation of the North American Number Plan system for St. Maarten, which will bring the island in line with telephone users in the Caribbean region, the USA and Canada.
The other milestones include; Permissive dialling of two separate country codes into St. Maarten; adjustments to company equipment to accommodate new Carrier-select numbers and most recently, new international dialling codes for calls to Europe; Curacao and the BES islands and other NANP countries.
Mr. Hodge said tonight’s milestone will signal the end of major changes to company equipment that will have a significant impact on customers.
"We cannot avoid the interruptions that will be caused to landline users and we are putting mobile communication systems in place with the emergency services so that the public can continue to have access to these emergency services," said Mr. Hodge.
The TelEm Group engineer has meantime apologized to TelEm Group customers on the company’s behalf for any inconvenience caused.