BTC customers experienced a decrease in mobile, landline and internet service disruptions during Hurricane Sandy over previous storms.

Last year BTC invested $5 million in standby generators and battery fuel cells for the company’s exchanges and cell sites to provide customers with improved telecommunications services during commercial power outages.

“We faced the reality that the power supply during storms can be really unreliable and the upgrades were needed” said Peter Jones, VP of Technical and Engineering Services.

“Our aim is to ensure that all of the key population locations of the Bahamas, including the family islands, are equipped with backup power in the next couple of years, so that they can enjoy the same backup resilience as New Providence.”

During Sandy, the BTC cellular network was interrupted only in a few areas. The addition of 21 new fuel cells in New Providence prevented a potential 50% outage in cell service across the island.

A dozen generators across the family islands have already been repaired or replaced, with plans to continue the company’s upgrades in the near future. In New Providence, BTC will soon install a secondary 1.5 megawatt generator at Poinciana, a key location in BTC’s network operations. This location will have two backup systems.

BTC invested an additional $2million during the nationwide 2G and 4G upgrades exercise, replacing batteries for all locations, resulting in much longer battery life – up to 6hours now versus 30 minutes with the old batteries.

A massive outage in June of all BTC Networks was determined to be the result of a failure of both generator power and battery fuel cells at the company's Poincianna location.



Nikia Wells
Internal Communications
Corporate Headquarters, JFK
Telephone: 302-7573