LIME repairing cable failure
(CNS) Updated 6pm: LIME customers may have problems with internet and phone services following a failure early yesterday on their submarine cable system that runs north and south out of the Cayman Islands, the local telecommunications company said. LIME is working on repairs but said that 34% of the Cayman international circuits are still down. Customers will likely experience difficulties throughout the day when calling internationally, and inbound calls will also be impacted. LIME said that customers may also experience intermittent failures with international dialing and roaming customers may encounter call issues. Michael Edenholm, CEO of Logic, told CNS Monday evening that Logic TV and internet customers were not experiencing outages due to the MAYA-1 cable failure.
LIME has also confirmed that, contrary to an earlier statement in which the company said that other carriers had issues with international capacity, Logic customers were not experiencing any issues with voice or data traffic, as a result of having restoration arrangements.
In their initial release, LIME said that in the early morning of Sunday 28 July, at approximately 6am, a failure occurred on the MAYA-1 Cable System, which is a submarine cable system that runs north and south out of the Cayman Islands. It is this system that provides internet and international capacity for LIME Cayman Islands, LIME Jamaica and LIME Turks and Caicos.
LIME’s initial findings are that the Maya-1 Cable System has suffered a shunt fault at on Segment 6, which is located between Half Moon Bay (Cable station) and Repeater 1 (Line Amplifier) in Cayman. The failure is preventing the local power feeding units from reaching their operating output levels and forcing them into shutdown mode despite numerous attempts to restore them. This first repeater is some 47km out to sea, and at this stage there is no definitive information on the exact location of the impairment that is causing the shunt fault so LIME’s team is continuing to work with local resources,suppliers and the other MAYA landing stations on this matter.
As no damage on the "Land Segment" of the system has been found, LIME said the team has now turned their efforts to more closely examining the shore-end of the cable system. These activities are now underway with divers familiar with the cable-landing, making the necessary preparations to conduct this detailed survey. The divers are expected to specifically identify any possible impairments that may be of concerns and potentially leading to this outage.
LIME took steps yesterday to restore as much traffic as possible to go via the Cayman Jamaica Fibre system. At the moment traffic has been activated where capacity is available and operators have prior agreements.
Detailing current customer impact, the company said that internet customers (ADSL and Mobile data) may experience degradation of internet service; customers may also experience intermittent failures with international dialing; customers of Logic and West Star will experience issues with the international capacity; and roaming customers may encounter call issues. 34% of the Cayman international circuits are still down. Customers will likely experience difficulties throughout the day when calling internationally. Inbound calls will also be impacted.
In addition to the ongoing inspections, LIME has also taken the preliminary step of advising a cable repair ship as a member of the Atlantic Cable Maintenance Agreement body (ACMA), effectively placing them on standby in the event the fault is proven to be at sea.
Lastly, LIME is also working with the MAYA Consortium to reconfigure the system in an attempt to power-feed the cable from Miami. This is a complex process that will require a complete system outage and will be attempted starting at mid-night, Tuesday 0000. At this stage the Cayman traffic is down, but LIME stressed that MAYA traffic between the Americas (not destined for Cayman) is still working, however this reconfiguration will force a full system outage.
LIME GM Tony Ritch stated, “This is obviously a major outage for the country, and we apoligize for this protracted downtime and impact to consumers and businesses. Regrettably given the complexity of this system, it is taking quite some time to identify the fault. At this stage we are expecting the system configuration changes that will commence in a few hours to yield positive results and restore the traffic. Our local team is also working diligently to re-route traffic where possible to minimize the impact. As more information becomes available, LIME will provide updates to the media and via various channels including text alerts to the wider base.”
He concluded, “Until we are able to conduct some additional tests (in the early hours of Tuesday morning) once the entire system is off-line, we may not be able to definitively identify the likely location of a possible cable fault. Unfortunately, LIME will not be able to offer any additional details on the likely restoration time-frame until more information becomes available.”
The Information and Communication Technology Authority (ICTA) and the Ministry of Planning, Lands, Agriculture, Housing and Infrastructure (PLAHI) have been kept informed of all developments, LIME said.
Category: Local News
WHY ARE WE SO PASSIVE? We know that we're getting shafted but say nothing. And we don't get any help from government even if we scream about these utility companies. They [government] let them do whatever they please and never chastise them in any manner to let them know that they are watching. I am firmly of the opinion that there is "collusion" between the two phone companies. Why, you may ask? Well let me tell you why I've come to that conclusion!
Remember when Digicel first entered the market here in cayman? And remember how they and [Cable & Wireless] Lime were constantly at each others throats? And remember it got so bad they were suing each each other and making all kinds of claims and accusations against each other. Do you remember that? I'm sure you do. And then suddenly they were best friends no law suits, no name calling and they even agreed on a little scheme where they could both add a little extra to their bottom line.
Remember the promotional campaign where they both kept telling us that if anyone wanted to switch from whichever carrier to the other, it could be done so easily without having to change your current number, but giving no details of what it would cost us eventually! And believe me a lot of people fell for it. You see what they didn't tell you is, that when ever you called a number thinking that it's a Lime number [but in actuality it's a Digicel number ] you are paying Lime thirty cents [or thereabouts] per minute. And from the other side it's the same deal. No one to the best of my recollection [from either company] ever made an announcement about that hidden cost! "Shame on them".
And here's a really good one! My son is away on vacation for a few weeks visiting family and we text each other all the time to save on phone calls. We've sent each other texts without problem [except for the time delay in receiving a message]. That is until yesterday, when I became a bit anxious and called him to learn that he had received all of my messages and answered me in return but I never received one message up until now.
GO FIGURE!!
Just one question. How many Chartered/Professional Engineers does each of the essential utilities have nowadays, starting with CUC, Water Authority, telcos , Cayman Water, NRA, PWD etc ( and I dont mean technicians). Hint therein lies your problem with Cayman's infrastructure issues today, everybody is an expert.
I know what you mean, technicians are important too like Nurses are to medicine but there are reasons you have Doctors afterall.
Folks don't buy the bull about a damaged submarine cable. It is my opinion that this problem started weeks ago with calls being suddenly cut, and other unexpected glitches. It is my opinion that the problem that we are having points directly to the recent trenching and excavation of the road ways to run television cables for the New Lime T. V. system they have been promoting for the last few months. Now I believe they have damaged some existing buried cables and have no idea how to fix them.
Instead of trying to get more services on line like the T.V. thing, how about getting the service for which you hold your license up to par, before rushing to get all this other stuff in place.
LIME your telephone service stinks. Your first obligation is to the people who use your telephone system. I have been a customer of this company from when C&W first started in cayman, and I have never switched. But for the first time I'm seriously thinking about it.
Government have to regulate these utility companies so that they are forced to provide good "dependable service" to the people of this Island. Call Digicel from a Lime phone and it costs you thirty cents per minute. But it cost only 20 cents per minute to call the United States! Go Figure! That's are rip off!
Why do we have to call Jamaica to listen to someone who don't seem to understand what you are asking for. And why don't Lime update their customer listing so that the operators don't have to tell us that they can't find the listing. It's all about "GREED" folks.
Perhaps we should all get MAGIC JACK or SKIPE, then we'll be able to talk to each other all day for nothing.
Thank you for this comment. I can only hope that someone at LIME will see it any take the necessary steps to correct the problems.
RIght on 23.28 and could Lime and Westar come back into Snug harbour and clean all the dust and other shit they left there? And replace the road to the standard it was before they started? Our car looks like it has been through a saharan dust storm every morning and we live where there is little traffic…XXXX
I have had both services, and seriously LIME is better. Firstly i admit that LIME its a little more pricey, but i believe there is more value to argue. when you consider Digicels customer service, products and island coverage.
Digicel brags of 100% coverge-but i have found serious dead zones in the eastern districts, south sound and grand harbor. When i called to query the issues, i was told it was my handset. So, i then decided to purchase another. Low and behold the problem persisted and to make matters worst their support left me high and dry eventually explaing that their coverage was not in fact at a 100%. This may not be a problem for many, but my business needs coverage security.
Digicels point to point internet service-need i say anything about this deplorable product/service? An worst the "fixed line service". CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP Technology
As for customer service-I prefer LIME. Even though 811 ques are longer, i have come to appreciate this service as I always get what i need done. This is not the case with Digicel in my experience. I am four months into a Digicel mobile contract and to date my billing is screwed, and NO ONE has been able to explain what happened or when it may be fixed. I am also still waiting for a call from my account manager on this …….
The post above mentoins greed. You think Digicel isnt in it for the money?
Anyways, ill be returing my services to LIME and testing LOGICS new fibre netwok when available.
All I can read is bitching at Lime and Digicel my a bunch off miserable people who are looking at the hole in the Doughnut. Don't we all get flat tires and break things. Go get a life.
20.26…did you turn your computer on yourself or did someone have to help you?
Why does not Lime not have "restoration arrangements" like Logic does?
Logic pays Lime to carry their international circuits on the MAYA cable. For an extra fee, Lime automatically routes Logic's international circuits via the CJFS cable in the event of a failure on the MAYA cable.
This is a fine piece of marketing on the part of the Logicals, but all of the work was done by Lime. The only work Logic had to do was issue a press release, and they did that quite well.
Logic has capacity on Maya & CJFS, passing traffic on both simultaneously. If one circuit fails, Logic transfers its traffic to the other circuit. Lime has nothing to do with this.
Let's hope their technicians are better than their customer service staff. Anyone who has had the misfortune of needing Lime's assistance with their account will know what I mean.
Same problem at the competitior. Still waiting for credits dating back 5 months, and have the added comfort of being disconnected every month because of it,; thank you Digicel.
Sad to say I do
Yes…even in Eastern europe, which until 20 years ago was way behind this place in terms of development, you can now get high speed interenet within 1 day at a very reasonable price (around 25 Euro per month, no limit on usage). So here, no service, long delays, and bills 3 times the size…
And the population in that area is how big? Certainly larger than 3 times the size as here. You see, it’s all relative.
you may be right 21.11…but the attitude is all local..which is not suffered in those small countries any more, as it was in the Soviet Union…they developed and moved on and compete with the world now…here, it is almost like they are doing us the favour by giving us the so called "service"…assholes forget that us paying their excessive bills keeps them in work..maybe we really do need to all think about what we hate most (Lime/CUC for example) and when it suits us organise a total boycott until they get the message?
C&W, aka LIME raped this country for years as a monopoly. $500 deposit for a landline; we will get you connected in 4-6 weeks. Remember when AT&T came on board, and later switched to Digicel? Rates were cut in half overnight, incoming cell calls became free, and of course they still make a huge profit.
I won't give LIME a dime of my business ever again, regardless of their rates.
pretty hard 2 get good service from digicel aswell. still waiting for a tech to fix coverage in my area. get what u pay 4 i guess?! and the sales staff are not much to brag about-crap service in the stores. internet sucks . so yeah its cheaper
sLIME at their best!!! Maximizing their profits from cheap unreliable hardware.
While I’m no big fan of LIME, MAYA1 certainly isn’t cheap nor is it unreliable. In operation for 13 years, I can recall only one other incident that the cable was offline or functioning below standards for longer than 72hrs. This current issue would make two…that’s publicly acknowledged at least.
See: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAYA-1 to educate yourself on one of the longest cable runs in the world and the first at this length (still #1 ?).
MAYA-1 is one of the longest cable runs in the world? REALLYYY? It is just over 4,300km in length. All of the Trans-Atlantic Cables are somewhere between 10,000km and 15,000km in length and several of those were in operation well before MAYA-1. (No it is not "still" #1, OK?)
Now to the Pacific. Yeah, the Pacific – as in "ocean". I am sure you have hear of it. It also has cables spanning its sea-floor. In case you need a geography lesson it is just a tad larger than the Caribbean. The CUCN trans-Pacific undersea cable is about 30,000km in length and was put into service 1999.
Just goes to prove that you can't trust everyone who claims to quote Wikipedia because they canbe as full of BS and mis-information as the next moron. Go back and study some more and come back when you educate yourself.
This has been failing for the last 3 weeks nothing new, it just got to the point of no return and they had to admit publicly now, maybe a discount on our bills would be nice.
Discount for bad/no service? HA! That will happen when a certain VERY HOT place freezes over solid – and not before. Three cheers for all who love LIME —————————————————– I'm still listening but I sure ain't hearing!!
Honestly LIME sucks! Wish I had other alternatives.
Relax. Like everyone else, I completely dont understand the technicalities of what went wrong (Maya consortium…..), but these things happen. I know enough that communication is via a subsea cable system, and something has gone wrong with that. Hey, mechanical failures happen. And we temporarily have an issue with instananeous electronic communication……which didnt even exist in 1990……and still doesnt for most folks 500 miles to the east in Haiti. So relax people. You cant expect everything to be perfect everytime. Gawd.
Why is it that those of you come to this median and throw stones, when something like this happens. Everything even cables have a life span just like cars, planes and even us humans. At some point a failure will happen. How quickly you residents and Caymanians are to point a finger. Or is it that you all forget we as The Cayman Islands are indeed called a third world country. I believe that you should be gratefull that any company comes to these shores and invests yes the make a profit but we could all be living in the dark with no lights a/c cars or phone or cable service like some countries in this vast big world that we call home. Give LIME a break ok. Be gratefull for what we have for I remember not too long ago Caymanians didnt have much and lived in waddle and thatch houses how quickly you all forget. When you get ready for bed tonight say a small prayer and thank God because we all could be going asleep in the dark. I know I for one am gratefull for everything family, friends and my job and yes for a cell, internet provider called LIME. Just my thoughts, just look around the Caribbean to the South, North, East and West and be gratefull of what each and everyone of us has a very loyal and true LIME customer and yes am a Caymanian and am proud to be one. Peace and Love to all who call these islands home. Is one or two days of cell internet service gonna kill you all go spend this down time with your families and friends.
19:47, "Everything even cables have a life span just like cars, planes and even us humans."
And everything needs servicing or do you just wait until it completely fails before you fix it?
Procastinating at its very best.
Hi there 19;47 suspected Lime employee who remembers "waddle (sic) and thatch houses"!!!
My internet has been down since last Thursday and I wont bore you and CNS with the crap I have had to endure with their customer relations people. And will we get a rebate of funds for service we could not access? No, they always like to refer you to the small print. The service is absolutely disgraceful.
So what you do is invest and have 2nd or even 3 rd replacement systems in place for when it fails……not rocket science. We have Internet that is not much better than AOL offered on dial up in 1998
Logic rerouted traffic seamlessly to CJFS
Oh Pam. Marketing 101 right there. 😛
I am no fan of SLIME, I got out in 1996, but I have to point out just how idiotic your comment is – check out who actually owns CJFS and get back to us.
Silly person
See, this is why it is so important to have a 3rd internet provider to this country. XXXX
That won't solve the problem, it is infrastructure.
They will all use the same cable….
No company is going to spend the millions upon millions it would cost to have their own Internet data line into and out of the Cayman Islands. Which is why even Logic buys a chuck of connection from the MAYA1 to their Bermuda uplink . And no, satellites ain’t going to cut it. This is more complex than just having another ISP. I’m all for that, but I know it’s not something just any company is willing to do and $pend the money to be independent of theMAYA1 cable. Just my 2 cents.
Why so you switch every time there is a fault? What difference would it make?
Weststar's response to angry customers: It's LIME's fault!
Logic's response to angry customers: Lime did it.
Lime's response to everyone: It's Wacky wednedsay! No, wait. It's our best Summer EVER! Wait, what day is it? Don't make any calls from today to friday and we'll reward you with a bill that doesn't add up at the end of the month!
LIME had better customer service and account managers when they were a C& W monopoly!? The rebranding was a failure and senior staff does little these days.
The rebranding was a failure??? Really. I think it was the most honest thing they ever did to date (which wasn't much to begin with) but let's look at their new name shall we… LIME when we think of LIMES and LEMONS what do we think of?….not a trick question I assure you. So as you can see they are now coming clean.
I made limeade and lè-ma-nade. That cool refreshing drink. Some Swanky too child!
i agree ! customer service is really bad. The other day i called 611 and was on hold for over 20 minutes same with 811 i wondered how long it would take to answer, so i acutally stayed on hold…….again over 20 minutes before i gave up 🙂
18:o6 You are so correct. You have to wait for half of a day to get through and listen to some of the most horrible music. I would fell good waiting if you had to listen to say Mr Radley Gourzongs music or even Burmon Scotts but this music dont even relate to Cayman. I say we also need to demand that we also get our own Cayman telephone HOPERATORS, oh I just meant to say operators.
Agreed. Da wha dey get for downsizing to the level where their most experienced people are gone.
And ……don't forget properly trained. They had a technical training programme that made them a world class engineering firm. As soon as they abandoned that and promoted people into positions who were not eligible, they went downhill fast in their drive to become a marketing company where the bean counters reigned supreme.
But forget digisell, remember post IVAN and who was up? Nuttin has changed.
Well said. Just try calling the telephone operators. What a hassle, they dont understand us and we dont understand us. Three calls to them to get a number. I say give us back our Cayman operators please…
That's what happen when Jamaica get involved, they take all our jobs and transfer them to themselves and create employment there while our people get laid off. Fact, check it out, with computers these days you can work from anywhare in the world once you have the clearance to do so. Many years ago we exported our shark skins, cow hide, turtle shell and tatch rope, etc. once it was delivered we got nothing for it, if we were lucky we sometimes got a few dozen pairs of Tommycan working shoes. Fact , thats why we started shipping our goods to Key West Florida. Goods bound for Cayman through Kin. rarely got here, even cars disappeared in shipment. ask the older folk, folks.
Customers are being sacrified so they can sell "LIME" off, probably to Vodafone.
They are all alike. I have been trying to upgrade my phone for months now. Every time I go into Lime customer service informs me that they do not have anything that I would like!! Weststar is also a hot mess. For days now I am unable to get channel 3 and channel 116 keeps fading out. I hope my account is credited more that the 75 cents I got last month.
I agree we need more internet service but not from third world countries. With effieciency perhaps 2 could do.
Not from third world countries?
Hmmn-maybe you should study up on the topic.