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Lawmakers to meet with IT&E
Members of the House Committee on Public Utilities, Transportation, and Communications are set to meet with representatives of IT&E sometime next week.
The main purpose of the meeting, according to Rep. Francis Taimanao (Ind-Saipan), who chairs the committee, is to inquire about the service provider’s contingency plans.
“We would like to know what their plans are, should another incident like this happens in the future,” Taimanao.
The CNMI suffered a massive communications outage a few weeks ago, and according to IT&E, services returned to normal last Monday.
Repairs to the damaged submarine fiber optic cable were also completed, the service provider said.
Taimanao said he has already sent the letter of invitation for the meeting on Aug. 5 at the House chamber on Capital Hill.
“We will ask not just for the status, but for the damages that it [outage] created, including losses of the business community,” Taimanao said.
He also plans to ask IT&E about it has a plan to upgrade its backup system to “at least provide minimum operating capacity for the community” if an outage happens again in the future.
“Or at least a system to allow certain essential agencies, from both the private and public sectors, to be the priority,” Taimanao.
He also plans to ask IT&E of its plan to address “bottleneck” concerns.
“When services come back on and everyone on the CNMI start accessing, a bottleneck is created. How will IT&E address this in the future?” Taimanao asked.
