Guyana suffered major Internet shutdown; service restored

Last Updated on Saturday, 26 December 2015, 21:00 by GxMedia

Thousands of Guyanese were without Internet Service for several hours on Wednesday because the Guyana-Suriname fibre optic submarine cable was damaged, the company said in a statement.

International calls were also affected intermittently, GTT said.
Subscribers to Internet provided by the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) began experiencing degraded service very early in the day eventually becoming a total outage. The company said the damage to the Suriname Guyana Submarine Cable System (SGSCS) 277 km off the Guyana shore.

Local and international technicians were deployed to fix the problem. The phone company later apologized for the disruption. “GT&T regrets the adverse effects caused by the disruption of our services due to the damage to the Suriname Guyana Submarine Cable System (SGSCS),” stated the phone company.

A company official said the service was restored around 12:30 (Guyana Time), even as local and overseas technical teams were working to ensure the service was at its maximum again.

Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of Digicel (Guyana) Gregory Dean said some of his company’s subscribers lost service due to congestion. He explained that customers only in certain areas did not receive internet service on their mobile phones with that carrier.

GT&T offers landline, mobile phone and Internet services, making it the major telecoms provider for the South American country.