Torres encourages residents to ‘control’ their Internet use

Acting governor Ralph DLG. Torres is urging CNMI residents to monitor their use of the Internet, as repair efforts on the damaged undersea fiber optic cable owned by service provider IT&E continue.

Torres gave the advisory yesterday, acknowledging that the “past weeks have been difficult” to everyone in the CNMI. He appealed to the community to continue cooperating and participating in “productive dialog” with the CNMI government.

The Commonwealth Homeland Security and Emergency Management Office also released yesterday a similar advisory, urging the community to “reduce visitations of high bandwidth websites such as those with streaming” services.

The agency continues to assist IT&E in its repair efforts.

Marvin Seman, special assistant for Homeland Security, said the control of Internet usage will “aid in the repair efforts in the next week.”

“I know a lot of residents have done a great job in reducing Internet usage,” he said, adding that there is “still a lot of repair work” to be done.

On July 13, Torres declared a state of significant emergency on the islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Rota after a massive communications breakdown cut off the Commonwealth from the rest of the world.

Torres said the declaration was made after consultations with IT&E.

On July 8, the IT&E-owned fiber optic cable was detected to have been heavily damaged, causing the loss of mobile telephone services and Internet access throughout the Commonwealth. The outage effectively caused businesses—including banks, financial institutions, and remittance services—to grind to a halt.

In the state of emergency declaration, Torres said the “disruption of critical infrastructure services threatens the public peace, health, and safety of the Commonwealth’s residents.”

With the declaration, the Commonwealth Homeland Security and Emergency Management Office was tasked to provide assistance and support, and was granted a temporary exemption from any Commonwealth regulation “which would tend to prevent, hinder, or delay any action it deems necessary” when assisting and supporting the Commonwealth in its recovery from the infrastructure disruption.

HSEM was also tasked to establish a joint task force with IT&E to provide the government with regular updates. A complete report from the agency is expected to be submitted to the Office of the Governor on or before Aug. 31.