The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) said in a statement released yesterday that it is investigating a series of electronic communications outages throughout The Bahamas over the past few months.

The regulator said that last month there were significant outages on Andros, the Berry Islands, Exuma, Inagua, Mayaguana and Ragged Island.

"To date, services have been restored on these islands," the statement said.

"Outages and disruptions such as these, and those documented in previous months, have led to increased public concern over the reliability and quality of electronic communications services in The Bahamas.

"URCA shares that concern and has been consistently engaging with all its stakeholders, which include BTC."

URCA said it met with executives at the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) regarding the outages and discussed plans to correct the problems.

Last week, BTC released a statement revealing what it said were the causes of the faults in its system, which included issues with power and instances of theft and destruction of equipment.

The statement explained that customers on Grand Bahama, Abaco, South Andros, Mangrove Cay, and Mayaguana have experienced service disruptions with their landline, internet, and mobile services.

BTC's CEO Sameer Bhatti said in the statement that they are in talks with Bahamas Power and Light over some of the issues customers experienced recently, which included brownouts.

"We apologize to our customers in the Family Islands that have been experiencing issues over the last few weeks," said Bhatti.

"Many of these outages were due to power-related issues that impacted our ability to provide connectivity.

He added: "In Mayaguana, there was a 'brownout' which resulted in a drop in the necessary voltage required to operate our network equipment on the island.

"This subsequently caused damage to our air conditioning unit, which is necessary to keep our equipment functional. The equipment in Mayaguana is connected to Inagua, which also caused issues there."

URCA said BTC has made assurances that it is taking measures to prevent similar issues in the future.

URCA said in the meantime, it is conducting its own investigation into the causes of the outages.

"URCA is committed to working with its stakeholders, including the government, service providers and the public to effectively strengthen the delivery of electronic communications services in The Bahamas," URCA's statement said.

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