BTC has announced a $1.7m compensation package for customers following the Bahamas-wide disruption that left people out of service for nearly 24 hours last month.

In a statement issued last night, senior PR manager for BTC Jerome Sawyer apologised to customers and said: “Obviously, we would rather not have service disruptions, but we always apologise and seek to soften the blow with some form of compensation or community give back.”

The compensation package will be launched tomorrow, with prepaid customers to receive a $5 credit, and on Sunday postpaid customers will receive a credit of 100 on-net minutes.

In addition, BTC will launch a “Text to Win” promotion on Tuesday, with all BTC mobile customers having a chance to win a new 2014 KIA car from Sanpin Motors by sending a text with the word “car” to #5007, as well as thousands of dollars in other prizes, including additional credit.

Mr Sawyer said the value of the compensation represents about five times the regular daily consumption of the average customer.

“The prepaid customers compensation is $1,235,000 and for postpaid, $465,000,” he said. “The differential in the totals reflects the larger prepaid customer base.”

BTC said last week that an independent investigation is underway to ascertain the cause of the disruption. The statement did not say whether the disruption had been reported to URCA, the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority. URCA had previously said it was awaiting an official report from BTC before it could start an official investigation, saying that it could not rely on media reports to launch a probe.

BTC previously said that unspecified “technical failures” were the cause of the disruption in land line, mobile and internet services on the weekend of March 22-23.

The company also suffered a system-wide meltdown last June which affected more than 300,000 mobile, landline and broadband customers. Six months later, URCA found that BTC failed to implement preventive measures and could face serious penalties if the problems were not addressed.