Docomo: Power outages affected services

Docomo Pacific said yesterday that power outages brought by Typhoon Vongfong was the culprit for the disruption of its cable, Internet, and mobile telephone services the past couple of days.

The telecommunications company’s general manager, James Nelson, said Commonwealth Utilities Corp.’s power outages and drop lines between the power pole and the subscriber’s home caused the service interruptions experienced by Docomo Pacific customers during and after the typhoon hit the island.

“After the typhoon passed, our cable TV and broadband Internet services were inoperable because of power outages. CUC power outages affected business and residential cable TV broadcasts and broadband Internet services,” he said.

Nelson said after Gov. Eloy S. Inos issued the “all clear” announcement, Docomo Pacific crew immediately went out to fix their downed equipment.

“After the typhoon, our crews began repairing drop lines that were reported and those that they noticed as they were out repairing lines. There were no downed cable main lines or power pole to power pole lines.”

Nelson said the power outages did not affect Docomo Pacific’s cellular service as the telecommunications company has standby generators at its cellular sites.

Another issue Docomo Pacific had to contend with after Typhoon Vongfong was that IT&E’s down generator affected its broadband Internet services as well as its wireless 3G data network.

“This was due to IT&E’s generator going down and it affected the undersea fiber cable transmission of not only Docomo Pacific but IT&E, iConnect, as well as any other customers they had who relies on undersea fiber for data services. The problem lasted for more than three hours.”

Docomo Pacific leases undersea fiber cable bandwidth from its competitor, IT&E.

“Other than that, all is well and we’re all very fortunate that the typhoon was moving rapidly and did not have time to develop and intensify before it made it to the Mariana Islands,” said Nelson.

A wholly owned subsidiary of NTT DOCOMO, Docomo Pacific was originally a merger of Guamcell Communications and HafaTel prior to acquisition in December 2006 by the Japan telecommunications giant.

Docomo Pacific officially merged with MCV Broadband in May 2013 to become Guam and the CNMI’s leading provider of telecommunications and entertainment services.