Tuesday, August 21, 2012
By NATARIO McKENZIE
Tribune Business Reporter
nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net
THE Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) has completed its initial review in its investigation of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company’s (BTC) network outage, the communications regulator announced yesterday, stating that it had also requested three years of preventative maintenance records from the company.
The June 18 and 19 network outage affected both BTC’s fixed and mobile networks.
“On July 17, 2012, BTC fulfilled its reporting requirement to URCA, following a one-week extension of the initial deadline that was issued with URCA’s June 22nd launch of the investigation into the outage. The report submitted by BTC, preliminarily points to system failures associated with BTC’s emergency backup power supply for its Technical Complex, following the loss of commercial power on the stated dates. At this stage of the investigation, URCA has requested additional information from BTC and has also submitted a series of interrogatories which will allow the regulator to address critical information gaps and provide clarification on key issues,” URCA said in a statement yesterday.
URCA said that BTC has been asked to provide preventative maintenance records for the period of 2009 to 2012 for specified facilities and emergency response services, in addition to alarm and fault records for various power systems and equipment. The regulator said that interrogatories also address issues of backup power generation capacity, personnel assignments and procedural practices, electrical system designs and testing, and a range of other related concerns.
URCA submitted its request to BTC on August 16, 2012, and has given BTC 14 calendar days to meet its request. The regulator said that to-date it was “satisfied that BTC has been open and compliant in this investigation process.” The regulator said that once the supplementary report is received and URCA completes its review, a detailed statement of the regulator’s findings will be made available to the public, including any appropriate regulatory measures as may be provided for by the Communications Act and conditions of the operator’s licence.
Comments
Puzzled says...
URCA is a pompous little organisation that thinks it is dealing with AT&T or British Telecom. Have they any idea of the state of the financial and maintenance record keeping that existed at BTC/Batelco prior to the sale of the company?
To have a regulatory body to regulate the phone and cable companies in a city the size of Yellowknife (similar population to the Bahamas) would not be fiscally responsible unless it comprised of a staff 10 multitasking individuals. This URCA is ballooning as do all civil service departments and yet all they do is just boilerplate sections of regulations that they are lifting from the major telecom companies around the world.
If the government ends up repossessing BTC it will interesting to see well the future BTC responds to this kind of request from URCA
Posted 22 August 2012, 11 a.m. Suggest removal
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