BTL finally restores full service
The nightmare for Belize Telecommunications Limited, not to mention the rest of the country, is over–at least for the time being–as full internet and telecommunications services were restored late this afternoon. A short while ago I spoke with the company=s head of networking Ernesto Torres who said that BTL got assistance from a Mexican company to get Belize back on the information not-so-superhighway.
Ernesto Torres, Head of Networking, BTL
?Since at approximately, I believe it was around three o?clock, we were able to restore the entire capacity by re-routing our traffic via another carrier.?
Patrick Jones
?Which carrier is that??
Ernesto Torres
?The carrier is Avantel. We used the leg between Belize and Tulum since that was not affected. We used that to then cross connect from the Newer Network Cable Station to Avantel?s infrastructure or capacity network that they have and then they routed us back to Miami.?
Patrick Jones
?I understand the delay in getting on that system you had to negotiate?
Ernesto Torres
?Not really negotiate. The problem obviously as you know, as I had mentioned on Monday, there were several countries in the region that were severely affected by this break that was unprecedented. So, New World Network was really trying to gather capacity or look for capacity with other carriers to obviously seek how they can meet the requirements or their partners, which are the landing parties in ARCOS.?
Patrick Jones
?So basically, the problem is solved??
Ernesto Torres
?No, put it this way, the problem of us being able to restore our services has obviously been taken care of. But I don?t recall if I have mentioned on Monday when we did the interview that we are in fact going to put in effect permanent restoration plans to ensure that this thing doesn?t happen again.?
Patrick Jones
?You still have people up in Miami negotiating; how is that going??
Ernesto Torres
?Well, the executive that is up there is obviously keeping in contact with New World Network, with the U.S. carriers, with Avantel to make sure that the necessary arrangements are made; administrative wise. Because obviously when you try to get capacity from another carrier, they need to obviously provide you with a proposal and an order. So it?s easier to do it over there where we are located because we are at NWN, New World Network, to make sure that the different liaising takes place with the carriers that NWN, is trying to put together to assist its partners to give them capacity elsewhere.?
Patrick Jones
?To recap, tell me how did you restore your service and how much megs were you able to restore??
Ernesto Torres
?The capacity that we have restored is a hundred percent. All the internet, all the email, all our international private lines for the banks and everything has been restored.?
Patrick Jones
?And that was done through??
Ernesto Torres
?That was done through the re-routing of our existing capacity that we have. It is called a DS3. It is a nomenclature used in telephony to designate a certain bandwidth. It?s a forty-five Meg bandwidth. We were able and successful to have it re-routed through Avantel unto the U.S.?
Only two of BTL’s international clients are still without full service as their bandwidth is on the AT&T network, which cannot be re-routed outside of the broken ARCOS cable.
