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."