A major broadband outage has forced the suspension of online classes, limiting internet access and other mobile services across the country and further up the Caribbean region.
Two of the country’s main service providers—FLOW and Digicel—have been severely impacted by a major ‘fibre fault” on an underground cable. Because of this, customers will experience challenges browsing the internet, loading emails, sending and receiving WhatsApp messages and making landline calls.
People have reported difficulty using internet services from all corners of the country. There are also reports that some schools have been forced to suspend online classes because of a lack of internet access.
A broken underwater fibre cable between Antigua and Guadeloupe is suspected to be the reason for the outage. A statement by Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) stated:
“CWC advises of a possible fibre fault between Antigua and Guadeloupe on the Xtera-Optima, ECFS.”
Digicel customers in Barbados and St. Vincent are also affected by the outage.
Sources at FLOW stated it could take some time before services are fully restored. Information from the company’s network operations centre estimate full repair will be completed by Thursday, because damage to the underwater cables appears to be “major”.
They indicated that a temporary solution is currently being put in place. While internet will return, customers are likely expected to encounter unstable connections with dropouts until the situation is rectified.
Digicel posted an advisory to its Facebook page a short while ago.
“Valued customer,
We are aware that some of you may be experiencing an outage with your internet services. Preliminary investigations indicate that the cause is a technical issue with our international upstream internet suppliers which is affecting multiple internet providers across the Caribbean.”
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That media release was an old release from 2015 and should be disregarded.
The real issue is because of a land base problem and not with underwater fibre optics. The service providers were able to isolate the problem much faster than originally stated and internet connectivity was restored by midday today.
So once again….the original media report about underwater fibre optic cable breakage between Antigua and Guadeloupe is COMPLETELY FAKE NEWS.
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