Wednesday, 6th August 2008 - 13:32CET
Update 8: International connectivity - MCA to consider better contingency planning
A fault in the Go submarine cable between Malta and Sicily was repaired by 7.15 p.m. today, ending a day of misery for hundreds of internet users who had no link with overseas sites.
"The fault has been repaired," a spokesman for Go told timesofmalta.com.
Meanwhile, the Ministry for IT and communications in a statement expressed its concern over what happened today and said Malta will have four submarine cables linking it to the continent by 2010. There are currently two, the one belonging to Go and another owned by Vodafone.
The Malta Communications Authority (MCA) said that as from tomorrow it will consider ways to improve and speed up contingency plansto avoid a repetition of what hapened today.
The Communications Ministry said the availability of several options for international connectivity had been and continued to be a priority of the government to ensure that any future accidents such as this one would have an ever lesser impact on the Maltese economy and information society.
“In this context, without creating market distortions, we shall work with the telecoms providers to enhance Malta’s highways by aggressively pursuing the expansion of international connectivity on all counts with the aim of improving the resilience of this critical infrastructure."
Quoting the Smart Island Strategy, published last year, the ministry said: “We shall follow an ambitious path to have more connections to mainland Europe (laid via alternative routes to the existing ones), North Africa and potentially to the Middle-East, landing in different locations and connecting to different nodes, hence establishing us as a real regional hub for electronic services.”
It said new fiscal incentives to assist private enterprise in investing in more connectivity had been drawn up and were currently being discussed with the European Commission for clearance.
Furthermore a second submarine cable by Go was expected to become operational by the end of this year, and Melita Cable was also planning another international connection that would meet the target set out in The Smart Island Strategy to have four international connections by 2010 (The other being the Vodafone cable to Sicily).
“This reduces nothing of the cost and inconvenience of the present reduction in connectivity. But the present experience is unfortunately justifying the government’s past and present efforts to facilitate and aid with public funds the avoidance of its repetition in the future,” the ministry said.
The fault developed this morning on land in Sicily because of infrastructural works and Go activated limited backup satellite and microwave links, while apologising for the inconvenience caused.
A spokesman explained that many people had been without overseas internet links because the backup internet service was provided through the microwave link, which was also shared with voice traffic and leased lines.
The Malta Communications Authority in a statement late in the afternoon had said that Go’s satellite and microwave contingency links had coped with international voice traffic that, in situations of emergency such as this, was given priority over other bandwidth requirements.
Following the Authority’s intervention, Go and Vodafone engineers worked together to divert Go’s broadband traffic onto Vodafone’s international cable to alleviate the problem.
Earlier, Vince Farrugia, director-general of the GRTU, said the suspension of internet services had caused widespread "panic stations" among many businesses which depended on the internet.
"The MCA needs to tell us exactly what it has been doing to ensure there is full back-up in such circumstances," he said.
The MCA in a new statement issued as services were being restored, thanked Go for its work to restore service as soon as possible. It also thanked Vodafone for the collaboration shown in working with Go to alleviate the problem, and the Italian regulator AGCOM that was instrumental in expediting matters with Telecom Italia Sparkle.
"MCA will be drawing its own conclusions from this unfortunate incident and will, as of tomorrow, be carrying out a post-mortem with the objective of seeing what needs to be done to improve and speed up contingency plans of all operators offering this international service."
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Comments
What do you care what Mr Grech uses his connection for? Maybe he uses it for whacking off to porn, but still do you think you have more right just because you use it for 'business'? How arrogant!
This is the typical Maltese way of going about problems. When are we going to learn and be proactive? This is a serious issue, which the government should have considered ages ago. To attract foreign investment we should have our infrastructure in place and provide a decent service. Instead the people responsible for attracting investment are busy putting up signs and billboards all around Malta!
Will we be compensated for yesterday's outage? Of course not... this is Malta remember.
We have to remember that many industries depend on these connections in 2008, its as important as water and electricitywhther we like it or not. So let s make sure that MCA doesnt take ages to come up with a plan and Im sure Minister Gatt wont let them sleep on it!.
And please lets make sure that Go or the Maltese Government if need be sues those responsible for this accident and accumulates enough tangible information from parties or companies who lost income due to this inconvenience. They should be compensated ! Let s make sure accountability is everywhere even in such matters.
It was a normal day as far as I was concerned, both e.mails and browsing/uploading/downloading continued uninterrupted.
It is only in Malta that we are not compensated for a whole day's loss of productivity. It is only in Malta that we basically have a duopoly in Internet, TV and mobile service providers.
At least foreigners are compensated, and at least they can switch ISP's when things go wrong. In Malta, we experience these "technical difficulties" with every ISP around once a month. I know through my own experience.
To have complete resilient one has to have mashed links...this will cost a lot to the country so it depends always on how much money there is to spend (as always).
The Electricity Cable to Sicily shall not be replacing the local power station - that shall remain in place. It will just connect us to the European grid from where we could supplement our Electricity supplies from the European grid whenever the need arises and when it is convenient and cheap to do so. To an extent, it would in fact reduce the chance of widespread power cuts as we shall have two sources - local and european.
GAMING IS LIKE DRUGS.
I am sure that for a number of iGaming this was just a nuisance as many had invested in their contingency plans well. In this case many of these business either switched to an alternative provider or switched to their backup sites abroad not to lose transactions. Some may have not been effected since they were not relying on GO connectivity. So before you shout about a big disaster let us look at the big picture. We'll wait for the MRGC for their reaction if there was the disaster you are saying happened
And yes restoring probably full connectivity after just 12 hours is a good job as elsewhere such incidents have taken days. And yes, we should look at today's incident to learn of our vulnerabilities to plan for a better and safer telecoms environment. This is what serious countries do when a disaster strucks them. Just think of 9/11, Tsunami,.Shuttle disasters and many more that happened around the globe.
This to put things into perspective. The important thing is that something is being done to avoid such inconveniences. As the minister said.
This was by far not the first time that problems developed on the international bandwidth connection, but this was the first major outage that occurred since Malta had two submarine cables connecting it to the rest of the world. Whilst internet outages were acceptable to some degree when there was only the Maltacom/GO cable because there was simply no alternative to the single cable, such incidents are simply not on if there is another route.
Let's all keep in mind that optical fibre cables are capable of carrying far more data than they are currently carrying. So this was not a question of Vodafone's cable not being able to carry the extra load. This was simply a question of none of the wise guys at MCA or Austin Gatt's Ministry ever bothering to come up with a contingency plan.
"MCA to consider better continency planning!!!!!" From the way that things unfolded today, it looks pretty obvious that there is no contingency plan to "better"
I've read many stupid comments, blaming & insulting GO when it was infrastructural works in Sicily that was to blame. Go has no control over Sicilians.
At least they tried to launch back up connectivity which didn't work so well, of course it wouldnt!
Whoever wants money can go to the Sicilians and beg for it Jew-Faced.
What sort of business uses the Main Traffic lines ?
Its either a direct line or satellite & I doubt the validity of a firm that doesn't.
Many firms abroad operate on Satellite Internet & I think maybe that's what Emmy Meant by us being a nation of dilettantes.
I must rephrase, us Maltese we think we know everything, when we know nothing.
Go fixed it up quickly, when I heard there was cable trouble I was thinking a Couple of days and not 11 hours. Well done Go.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/31/dubai.outage/index.html
http://www.mydigitallife.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4034&Itemid=36
http://www.out-law.com/page-4108
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39285390,00.htm
http://www.modaco.com/content/windows-mobile-news/258961/huge-orange-uk-network-failure-affects-1-5-million-handsets/
My business uses internet in its job. Will we be given a compensation for lost sales?
Prosit goes to all parties involved in the process of restoring the internet service. At least during the downtime we enjoyed the Times of Malta site that was up and running and keeping us all updated with the developments. Good Job to TOM staff. Same as you did during the Transport Strike. It is by far the best news site in Malta.
I hope you are kidding mate! For the money we pay we get the best service?! yeah right!! best service in a 3rd world country perhaps. I understand big businesses having a backup plan if things go wrong but you can't expect that from everyone. We indeed take many things for granted, but things are EXPECTED too!!! A decent service to start with!
ps. Not all businesses have a fax machine so its not always an option.
Are we the smart island or are we not? It probably shows the vulnerabilty of Malta's resources and the extent of its dependency on 3rd parties.
If the authorities are striving to promote this island into an IT safe haven, they must assure investors and operators in the business with the maximum guarantee of connectivity with the rest of the world. Internet today means the life and blood of many enterprizes. What appeared simple luxury some years back turns up as lively fresh oxygen in today's age. Local providers must therefore seek other alternative routes....
Malta should not stay an island but should grow up as part of a world.
The classical case of putting all your eggs in one basket. Go temporarily Gone. (Note possibly just restored).
Hope that as Go had their internet service down the best part of a working day, at least they have the decency to compensate those of us paying for a GO internet service,say by extending the internet subscription period, after all they would then bill the costs to the 3rd party who caused the problem.
A generic warning message on the GO front page would have been useful. An estimate of when the service would be back up would have been most welcome. Should have been part of the contingency plan. Although that is easy to say with hindsight.
@ All the rest who say businesses MUST have their own backup connection - This is your wake up call. It is 2008 AD. The service providers MUST have THEIR backup plan, so their customers business is not disturbed. Not the other way round. They are not doing us a favour by providing us with an internet connection. We are paying customers. Paying a lot more that other european users actually.
I would appeal to the government not to proceed with its plan ot link us to the european electricity grid. It simply does not make sense for us to end up being dependent on the whims of another country, no matter how friendly it currently is with us, for our vital electricity supply. The money spent on this dangerous link would be much better spent on developing alternative modes of electricity generation locally....such as a solar thermal electrical generating plant situated, say, in comino.
What do we learn?
Frank
P.S.: Isn't it "law" for the major "ISPs" to have a backup route? The government should look into that and in case there is such a "law" Go should be held liable for all those millions lost today!
It is extremely worrying that this morning, even MITTS, the government’s IT arm, was without an overseas link (i.e. all the public service)! Why haven't we seen an official statement from the ministry 11 hours into the problem? For the other gurus commenting here, do you realise that Vodafone and Melita services do not have 100% coverage, and so users like me have only one option: GO (should be renamed to GONE).
GO's service is more than adequate, and i believe it does provide good value for money. Today's incident does not change my perception of the company - ultimately they will be the only company in Malta offering 2 independent submarine cables to Europe. So Smart City, gaming companies and all the other international and local companies - rest assured.
You can probably use normal mail services. Problem is by the time your comments arrive no one will be interested in what you have to say because there will be another more topical subject and this will be history. Mind you with Santa Marija week on our doorstep we will likely have little to comment about!
I just hope the MCA take whatever action is necessary to ensure we never experience this sort of ridiculous outage again. It would also help us unsuspecting consumers to know what guarantees the MCA certifies to ensure there is full redundancy and not 'almost, full redundancy. Some of us will be more than happy to pay a premium for that peace of mind if that is what it comes to.
We are speaking about this issue as if its happening every day. Apart from that switching to other networks won't help a thing since they only have one cable as well. Go plans from the begining of the year where to place another cable which will be terminated at the end of this year. Unfortunately this issue had to happen now if it happened later we wouldn't suffer this situation. Apart from that no one can see the future and forthcome certain things, you can only plan and Go did plan for this year. Apart from that no other network company apart from go is planning to install anther cable so again GO will be the leading telecommunications company.
While we can grumble over the loss of internet service in these hours, we can only hope that an investigation is carried out on what happened and how it effected the country. Such investigations should result in lessons learned and should provide strategic orientation on where our country needs to be in the coming years. This is part of the essence of ICT Governance as a country and in each business entity.
M Muscat, you must be dreaming!!! If it were in the hands of the Government, we'd be a whole week without internet service. Hope no one from Castille reads your comment :))
We're spoiled, aren't we? :))
We're spoiled, aren't we? :))
Come on people, everybody complaining! These things happen. What I gripe about is that they don't have an easily accessible service health monitor webpage. I could have planned the day differently.
On the whole we are better off than semi-rural parts of the mighty old USofA.
A simple fault in a cable can cause so much problems and loss of business to all concerned.
Now next time Go announces an increase in its profits once again, we will know that it was us customers who contributed to profits for a company that did not ensure it had the required redundancy.
I also do not think Melita Cable have much to shout about. Try and get hold of their customer care branch in connection with Melita Cable TV and see how long it takes to get an answer from them.
This is what near monopolies cause!
There are multiple links out of Malta, any serious international company that wants a business continuity plan has to think ahead and responsibly get a back up line / alternate route out. Lines go down all around the world this is by far not an 'Only in Malta' occurrence.
On the other hand seeing that power in Malta is a monopoly should there ever be a Malta Sicily power link the authorities should definitely bear 100% responsibility for any failures. However this is Malta we are talking about, I think we are still introducing the words responsibility and accountability in our vocabulary.
I fully back up your reasoning. Unfortunately in Malta you are experiencing deskilling. Closing down of drydocks, seamalta, factories and the power station are causing you to have to depend on other countries. Scarily, the majority of your population is not even understanding that this is happening to your beautiful country. It seems that in Malta only the IT sector is important. (Which is, however you need a balance)
Closing down the power station may have a beneficial enviroment impact however it is the last example of how your goverment is not at ease with production and skills. Everyone knows that producing something is cheaper than buying it, yet you prefer sending money to European countries rather than producing it yourself (which they tell me, you have been doing since the british were in your country.) I wonder when you will understand that by importing nearly everything is damaging your economy. Imports need to be balanced by exports. R u working hard enough for this? It does not seem so according to EU benchmarks. So be strong and don't lose all the capabilities and competencies that your nation has built throughut the years.
The question about compensation for the lost internet time (downtime) hast to be asked.
Here in my hometown (near Stuttgart, Germany) I and a few thousand other clients of that ISP were without internet for a whole day last autumn. As a compensation for the inconveniences caused we were granted a 5% discount with our next invoice. This was done automatically, without any big announcement.
This is what I call good customer service.
But can we expect this from Go or any other company in Malta?
If you feel that GO treated you so badly and that they cannot be trustworthy then take your business somewhere else :) However I think Vodafone also has a single link with Europe. So what will you do when an accident happens on their link?
Additionally I think that GO did not hook up with Vodaphone purely for technical reasons. Not sure if the link Vodaphone has can handle the traffic of both Vodaphone and GO clients.
My ISP, namely Waldonet, is dual homed, meaning that it gets its bandwidth from 2 sources. When GO developed the fault this morning, Waldonet just made ammends and there was almost no downtime.
Whilst competition should have heralded a certain seriousness on the part of providers, it seems that at the very basic level, Maltese users have been taken for a ride: How shall GO compensate its users - domestic or commercial - for the downtime and disruption? I believe that since it failed to provide for adequate backup facilities, at the very least the MCA should impose GO to refund the portion of monthly fees which are paid by clients.
This accident should serve as a warning to the Government that when we talk of our IT industry and aspirations and on how 'Smart' Malta is becoming, we have to look first and foremost at the infrastructure.
This electrical interconnection is being acclaimed 'to be our survival connection to the main land'. Am I the only one who thinks it is a bad idea to have our island dependant on a cable linked to the rest of Europe via a couple of switches?! What if the cable/inverter/circuit breakers etc go faulty? Could Malta's economy and exigent consumers cope with whole days of interrupted supply?
As victims we would like to know the significance of: "Go has been in contact with Vodafone Malta for emergency backup services should these be required." Oh right, so are they sharing capuccino's, chewing the fat and pondering at what point we get to 'should these be required'......we require them NOW!!! Cost is not the issue!
Another gem is "Go was 'totally focused' to solving the problem as soon as possible". I should bloody well hope so!!! Duh!!!
This is a great PR coup for Vodafone adn Onvol - there will be a queue of new customers purchasing backup links from tomorrow!!!
I fully agree with you.
Why do they (GO) tell me on the phone that they would never use Vodafone as a backup link since that is a competitor and in the press release they say something different!
Why is it allowed that one single ISP causes x times as much damage to the industry than a bloody bus strike?
What a smart island this is...........
We all know that the link to Malta is a mere branch on the internet and that there is no redundant infrastructure should anything go wrong on one of the submarine cables. The MCA should have made it obligatory for all international bandwidth providers to fall back on each others' infrastructure through the local backbone, should anyone of them suffer a catastrophic failure like the one experienced by Go today.
Malta cannot afford to have half the population cut from the rest of the online world. These things are not supposed to happen in a country with Smart Island aspirations. The MCA should wake up and smell the coffee and stop being fussy on the petty of things and an absentee watchdog on crucial matters such as international connectivity.
re. refunds ... let's do some basic calculations - for the common and cheapest €13.85 subscriptions - €13.85 / 31 days in a month / 24 hours in a day x 7 hours downtime = €0.13 refund ... cool! lol!!!
I do believe that such an important asset for our country should not be in the hands of private operators, but in the hands of the Government.
Just about 3 months ago a major cable was damaged near Egypt, rendering most of the Middle East and parts of Asia and Africa without internet, including Dubai. These things happen, not frequently but they do. They had to re-route traffic through Asia and America..
What we need are more cables and more use of satellite connections. I'm not sure what GO's backup connections are (they mentioned satellite and microwave) but most customers and businesses are still without internet..
@Adrian Borg
Change ISP? this can happen to anyone.. it's not a question of ISPs or monopolies. But the ISPs should reach some agreement and offer fail-over services between themselves, something that is obviously not in place.
Anyway, I'm getting Internet withdrawal symptoms, so back to refreshing the Times every couple of seconds :-)
The article says "The MCA said Go has been in contact with Vodafone Malta for emergency backup services should these be required." Please somebody tell them that the backup service was needed hours ago! I am still without my internet!
The article adds that: "Go plc some months ago announced it would lay a second submarine cable to Sicily." Was this a serious announcement by a Maltese public company? What happened? Why wasn't it installed? Was it just an empty statement?
Is this what we are offering investors is Malta?
Um...... no :-)
This happens all the time with other companies and not GO only. Customers are always at a loss!
I have been enjoying Internet and international calling all day long!
You should have taken a holiday and gone to the seaside!
@ Ramon Casha
'If we're to be taken seriously as an IT superpower or whatever we're supposed to be, our infrastructure needs to be much more reliable than this.' .......IT superpower?? Are you serious? Please look around
OK then, why the heck is my internet service out of action????
That makes it easier to predict how successful SmartCity will be and how many big International companies can be attracted to Malta
Let's now wait for Go's crisis management. In 6 hours we can say more: Either FAIL or SUCCEED.
Wanna makes bets?
@P. Sultana: Where are your solutions to the problem? Do you have any to offer? Or just the usual policy of destructive criticism? It will get you nowhere, just pulls you and your mentors further down the gutter. Could it be that the cable was damaged by the greatly expected massive earthshaking quake? Or is it just a case of a mountain giving birth to a mouse?
Like this no service is interrupted and business lost.
Then at the end of the year the company which had used the other cable most when things have gone wrong pay some sort of compensation.
I don't think its rocket science!
If they fail to bring their connected internet users and services (websides, email servers, etc.) back online fast, the SmartCity consortium should think very well about whether or not appointing Go as their major partner for internet services.
Let me sa it again: Accidents happen, but the crisis management of a company then shows how good it is.
It's apologists like you that are the ruin of this country. The Maltese find excuses for every failure, and just look around us, there are many failures. Guys ... WAKE UP ... we're in Europe now ... lets start by striving for competence ...
Vodafone is currently working with GO to assist them in provisioning capacity.
No back up plan Dr. Gatt ??
If we're to be taken seriously as an IT superpower or whatever we're supposed to be, our infrastructure needs to be much more reliable than this.