Internet outage affects 300
Friday October 06, 2006

About 300 internet users, a majority of them business houses in the Suva area have been affected by an internet outage since yesterday afternoon due to a problem on the Telecom Fiji exchange.

According to Connect (internet service provider), the server broadband exchange (ADSL) has been down since around 5pm yesterday afternoon.

Connect chief executive Sharon Smith Jones says they are hoping that the problem would be rectified by this afternoon.

But as yet, it not clear what the problem is. "Until they fix it, they don't know what the real problem is," Jones concedes.

She says the problem comes from the Telecom Fiji exchange.

"It is new technology as well and we are always going to have teething problems.

"We have only rolled this out a year ago so obviously they have encountered problems that they haven't yet come across."

However, Sharon says Telecom Fiji has been working throughout the night and today to try and rectify the problem. The Australian suppliers of the equipment are also working with them on it.

She described the server broadband exchange as the D-slam.

"It is like a little exchange where all the lines go from," she said.

"We have got about 300 customers on that little exchange and it is only these people who have been affected.

"Unfortunately it is the majority of the business people that have been affected by it."

Jones says they are trying to keep their customers updated but it was extremely difficult.

"We really do apologise (for the outage). We don't want these services down at all because if we have a service down, our phones don't stop ringing. It is not good for anybody."