Friday, 8th August 2008
Clients may ask for compensation over internet breakdown
Go's refurbished office in Valletta yesterday. Go chairman Sonny Portelli has apologised for the loss of internet services on Wednesday which took thousands offline, including businesses. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi
Several companies who suffered financial losses due to the breakdown of broadband services on Wednesday may ask Go, the service provider, for compensation, The Times has learnt.
The breakdown halted access to the net for thousands of users including businesses.
But Go CEO David Kay said yesterday it was still too early to confirm whether there would be any remuneration. A number of options were being considered.
The fault in the submarine cable between Malta and Sicily left many Go customers without broadband-related services, international voice traffic and roaming, until it was fixed sometime after 7 p.m.
The Malta Communications Authority, which is the regulator, told The Times it had asked Go not to charge customers for the time the service was interrupted yesterday.
Head of communications Franco Aloisio said most "serious" companies dependant on the internet should be equipped with their own contingency plans.
"We encourage this even in our contracts, because although such incidents are rare, anything can happen, and if you depend on such services, you must be prepared," Mr Aloisio said.
But Marcel Cassar, managing director of Melitanet, an internet service provider that operates internet cafés and call centres around the island, said his company lost between €7,000 and €8,000 during the blackout.
He is seeking legal advice on whether or not to ask for compensation and is seriously considering changing his provider.
Mr Cassar accused Go of offering VIP emergency connections selectively to some companies at double the usual cost.
But Go denied that any customers were charged additionally.
"Go has a contingency plan which allows it to prioritise traffic for critical services. That is what happened yesterday and a number of services were made available according to this contingency plan," Mr Aloisio said.
Joe Cilia, managing director of Nextweb, said his company was also affected badly by the fault since Go is its main provider. He said Malta's name had been tarnished quite badly, as had the name of his company due to the services being down for the day.
The company received numerous calls for refunds from clients but it is too early to decide whether anyone will be refunded.
"The company has a contingency plan, but it is not intended for such a large-scale problem," Mr Cilia said.
The company would now be increasing its bandwidth capacity with the other provider so that if such an incident were to happen again, its services would not be shut down so severely.
According to Go, the fault was caused by a third party Italian contractor in Catania, but it is also "too early" to see whether any action will be taken against the contractor.
"Our major concern was to get things back to normal and make sure this does not happen again," Mr Kay said during a press conference held yesterday during the opening of its refurbished outlet in Valletta.
The incident justified the decision taken by the company some months ago to invest in a new cable which would make Go the only telecoms provider on the island to have two submarine cables to mainland Europe, he said.
Go chairman Sonny Portelli apologised for the incident and thanked everyone involved in restoring the services back to normal.
The second submarine cable to Sicily will have a totally different landing route and will be utilising a different provider - Interoute.
He added that this will provide resilience and backup in such instances.
A Ministry for Communications spokesman said that only one complaint was received yesterday, and no quantified losses were reported.
The complaint came from a call centre company claiming that one of its two centres was down for several hours.
"Broadband-dependent companies almost always have redundancy arrangements with connections sourced from both existing sub-marine cables," the Ministry spokesman said.
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Comments
I spent most of January of this year without an internet connection, GO came three times to check the lines, which they said were OK. Then they claimed that the problem was from the exchange, and then it was another excuse... and so on and so forth.
After four weeks it became so frustrating that I migrated to Melita lock stock and barrel, that is with both internet and telephone. Thanks goodness for that, as well, as during GO's predicament earlier this week my work and my life continued normally.
To. Mr.David Kay. Stop being diplomatic and evasive. Just give a reasonable compensation or a day of from the bill.
To the reporter Mr.Peregin. You should note that it was not only the businesses that suffered but all internet users. I'm one of them.
It is difficult to explain to a foreign client that most of Malta could be knocked off the internet for most of a day by a relatively minor occurrence.
Anyone whose work depends on internet connectivity would have missed the day's work, together with the business opportunities that could have arisen. The amount of loss this could cause could be anything from nothing to everything, depending on what was meant to be happening that particular day.
The effect would be tempered slightly by the low expectations of the Maltese client, used to second rate service as in other sectors. In a market such as Bandwidth Provision, it is high time that guaranteed service levels are improved.