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Internet temporarily crippled
IT&E services returned to normal at 1pm yesterday after a disruption in cellular and internet services that crippled communications and internet connection among its subscribers.
According to an IT&E press release, a damaged terrestrial fiber was the root cause of the service destabilization.
The damaged occurred at 3:30am due to what IT&E described as a “third-party” doing excavation work at the entrance of the IT&E corporate offices in Guam. Services in both the CNMI and Guam were affected.
The CNMI experienced loss of cellular data and internet services, while Guam experienced loss of cellular data and some of its enterprise services.
“The CNMI access out of the region travels through Guam. Although redundant paths exist between the CNMI and Guam at our facility, all circuits were cut at the building entry point. In the future, a completely separate building entry point will be utilized, eliminating the risk of a single point of failure,” said IT&E CEO Jim Oehlerking.
Joe (not his real name) learned of the disruption when he tried to surf the Web at 4am on his laptop. Unable to connect to the internet, he tried surfing the Web on his iPad, still to no avail. When he was still unable to connect to the internet via his mobile phone, he knew that there must be something wrong at IT&E’s end. It was only after 6am that he was finally able to connect to the Web.
Initial restoration of services began at 6:20am, with full restoration expected at 8:30am, but due to the number of cables that were damaged, additional maintenance was required, which resulted in intermittent service disruptions for subscribers in the CNMI and Guam.
By 1pm, services were restored and stabilized.
