By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Regulators last night voiced their displeasure with inconsistent and delayed reporting of network outages by Bahamian communications providers as they moved to better protect consumers from such disruption.

The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA), unveiling its proposed outage reporting and mitigation regulations for the industry, revealed it had been motivated to act by widespread and frequent customer complaints over the loss of communications services due to outages and other disruption on their provider’s network.

“URCA is cognisant that consumers in The Bahamas and globally are becoming increasingly dependent upon electronic communications services for both personal and commercial use, and accordingly consumers expect to receive high quality electronic communications services from licensees in The Bahamas,” the regulator said in its consultation document.

“In recent times, URCA has observed that there has been increased public concern over the reliability and quality of electronic communications services in The Bahamas due to, amongst other things, frequent outages and/or disruptions to electronic communications networks and services.”

URCA said such concerns and complaints were voiced by “many participants” in the focus group meetings called to assess potential demand for fifth generation (5G) technology in The Bahamas. The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC), in particular, suffered with service disruption and network outages across multiple islands this summer including Grand Bahama, Abaco, South Andros, Mangrove Cay and Mayaguana.

Some of this was blamed on inconsistent and unreliable electricity supply by Bahamas Power & Light (BPL), which BTC blamed for damaging and frying vital electronic communications equipment. The legacy provider also attributed Abaco and Grand Bahama outages to thieves stealing its copper wire and fibre optic cables, adding that the police had arrested some of the alleged culprits.

Nevertheless, URCA has decided to act. “URCA is concerned about the risks and harm to society, the economy and public safety and security due to frequent and prolonged outages of public electronic communications networks and public electronic communications services,” it added.

“In this regard, it is crucial for licensees to make necessary investments in their respective networks and services, and embrace best practices that promote the availability, performance or functionality of their networks and services where they are not already doing so.

“Accordingly, URCA proposes to impose a duty on both categories of licensees to take appropriate and proportionate steps to mitigate and remedy outages, and to adopt internal measures that promote the availability, performance or functionality of their respective networks and services.”

Based on responses by its communications licensees to its March 24, 2023, request for information on how they deal with network outages and disruptions, URCA said it had noticed several issues that must be rectified. “Reports concerning both planned and unplanned outages are submitted to URCA inconsistently and, as a result URCA, only became aware of several recent major disruptions to services via news broadcast, social media reports and complaints from affected consumers,” it blasted.

“The content of planned and unplanned outage reports submitted to URCA does not follow a standard format. URCA does not receive timely updates on the status of the restoration of services in connection with unplanned outages.

“URCA does not consistently receive sufficient detail on the cause of unplanned outages in reports submitted to URCA for URCA to understand the root cause and scope of the outage. Unplanned outage reports submitted to URCA do not contain root cause analyses and measures implemented by the affected licensee to mitigate recurrence.”

As a result, URCA concluded: “Licensees holding an individual operating licence (IOL) are required to, amongst other things, notify URCA of any unplanned interruption which prevents them from carrying out their obligations under their respective IOLs as soon as reasonably practicable.

“At the same time there is no obligation in the respective IOLs or otherwise mandating such licensees to notify URCA of any planned interruptions which prevent them from carrying out their obligations to customers.  URCA considers that the current outage reporting regime in The Bahamas does not promote timely and standardised notifications of planned and unplanned outages by licensees to URCA.”

URCA, benchmarking its proposed reforms against regulatory regimes in other countries, said it plans to define ‘planned outages’ as those that are part of regular network maintenance and which an operator knows will occur at least 72 hours in advance. In such instances, the regulator must be informed of what is to happen at least 48 hours in advance.

As for so-called “critical” and “major” outages, URCA is proposing to define these according to population and island. Disruption will be “critical” if it impacts 5,000 or more customers for the affected service on New Providence; 1,000 or more of on Grand Bahama, Abaco, Eleuthera or Exuma; and 50 or more on all other Family Islands.

It will be deemed “major” if it affects 1,000 or more subscribers for the impacted service on New Providence; 500 or more on Grand Bahama, Abaco, Eleuthera or Exuma; and 20 or more on any other Family Island. When it comes to reporting outages, URCA is proposing a four-stage approach.

It must receive an initial notice within two hours of an outage being detected, and then kept updated every hour and every two hours for “critical” and “major” service disruption, respectively. Outage resolution notice must be given within one hour of service restoration, and a full report handed to URCA no later than 28 days after the event.