It’s been a challenging month for telecommunications services in the Marshall Islands.
Earlier this month, voice services were off or intermittent for two weeks for Ebeye users, and for two-and-a-half-weeks for those on the outer islands.
When it was finally resolved last week, the next thing was Majuro faced cell, internet and 4G disruptions at the end of last week and then an extended internet and cell phone outage for airport to Laura users over the weekend.
NTA in a social media post over the weekend identified a number of problems causing the various telecom outages that its technicians were fixing.
- The Ebeye and neighboring islands disruptions were reported as “due to technical issues with the Majuro Satellite system.” Essential equipment was damaged by “a sustained power overload from the main grid” that affected what NTA described as an “aging” component of the system. “Compounding the issue, water intrusion was detected in the waveguide, further impacting signal transmission,” NTA said.
Remedial measures included installing a new satellite system and deploying an Uninterruptible Power Supply to strengthen infrastructure reliability and resilience, NTA said.
- The GSM service disruption on October 22 and 23. Starting October 22 at 2am and continuing through October 23 until 6pm, NTA experienced intermittent calling disruptions affecting mobile-to-mobile, landline phones, and PBX services.
NTA said the problem was traced “to a lightning strike on the NTA headquarters tower, which caused significant damage to critical equipment including the PRISM LTE wireless system, a 2G voice sector, and core network infrastructure.”
NTA said its “recovery efforts involved replacing the destroyed Gateway Network Switch, resetting and restarting two billing servers, and restoring two 2G/4G hardware units.” This involved coordination with offshore engineers and consultants to ensure all services were restored.
“Despite the presence of grounding systems, the incident highlighted vulnerabilities to electrical surges,” NTA said, adding that it is calling “for enhanced preventive measures to protect vital infrastructure.”
The rolling nature of NTA’s service outages in October continued October 24-25 with cell phone and internet services off for people and businesses from the Lojkar area to Laura.
Friday at 6:30pm, NTA issued a mass text notifying customers of a “technical glitch” with equipment at NTA’s airport site. “All services in these areas will experience disruptions,” NTA said. The problem was resolved around 4pm on Saturday.
Customers driving in from Laura during that nearly 24-hour period whose 4G and cell phone services were not functioning found as soon as they passed the Lojkar housing area, their cell phones suddenly binged to life, with 4G and cell connections appearing.