Duncan TuckerGuyana suffered a major international telephone and Internet outage for around five hours on Wednesday due to damage to the offshore Suriname-Guyana Submarine Cable System (SGSCS).
The Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) said in a statement that the “main fiber optic path out of Guyana” had been damaged, while the backup Americas 11 cable also experienced failures.
Neighboring Suriname also suffered outages as a result of the damage to the undersea fiber-optic cable. Inhabitants of both South American countries were unable to get online or make overseas calls until partial service was resumed around midday.
GT&T, which is a subsidiary of Beverly, Massachusetts-based Atlantic Tele-Network, apologized for the disruption but did not reveal what had caused the infrastructural damage.
The outage occurred just a day before Guyana’s parliament was due to debate a proposal to end the current monopoly on telecommunications and allow competitors to enter the market.
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