‘What is going on?’

WESTERN BUREAU:

Mobile-service customers in western Jamaica were frustrated and inconvenienced up to late Thursday evening after finding themselves unable to make or receive calls on their devices, an issue which at least one service provider said has been rectified and for which another provider is making precautionary checks.

The Gleaner spoke with a number of individuals who told of either being unable to see their attempted outgoing calls successfully go through, or of their intended calling parties being unable to receive their calls, which they said had been happening on both the FLOW and Digicel networks since Tuesday, January 2.

Preliminary reports suggested that people in Montego Bay were affected, but mobile-service customers from districts further out to include Dumfries and Content were also impacted.

Alecia Shaw, a FLOW customer, spoke with clear grievance in her tone as she described how, earlier this week, she and her daughter were unable to effectively communicate with each other during a pressing home emergency situation.

“When I was making the call and I wasn’t getting through, I was so angry, because I was basically out of my house and my daughter didn’t have a key to come into the house, and I was calling to let her know I wasn’t home at the time. I started getting angry, saying ‘What is going on, how come I’m calling her phone and not getting through?’” Shaw recounted.

“Each time I called, the phone just hung up, and she [daughter] was calling her father and couldn’t get through at the same time. I was grieved and wondering what FLOW was going on with,” Shaw added.

Nicole Hamilton, whose service provider is Digicel, was much calmer but no less inconvenienced as she outlined the difficulties she had with her phone on Thursday.

“My phone is Digicel, and for me it was all about bad connection, latency issues and audio issues. It was just a bit annoying,” said Hamilton, who noted that she was at work at the time of her phone troubles.

When contacted, FLOW’s communications manager Ceila Morgan confirmed that the mobile entity had in fact experienced a glitch which has since been resolved.

“We did have an issue that would have impacted some prepaid mobile customers, and that issue has since been addressed. We have not had a situation where we had several communities that have been out of service since the year started, and if one person indicated they have been having a service issue since the year started, it could have been isolated and, in that case, we would need to get the account number so we could investigate,” said Morgan.

“FLOW’s technical teams are investigating the cause of the service outage that impacted some prepaid mobile customers on January 3 and 4. The service outage was not based on geographical locations, and services have since been restored to the affected customers,” Morgan added.

Meanwhile, Digicel Jamaica Limited’s head of communications and corporate affairs Elon Parkinson likewise gave assurance that an investigation would be made into any similar reports regarding that mobile provider.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com