Cable & Wireless’s BlackBerry Services have
been restored after falling victim to the destruction caused by
Hurricane Dean.
The telecommunications company’s Caribbean Hub,
which provides BlackBerry services to customers across the world,
is located in Jamaica and was damaged as Hurricane Dean swept
through the island.
This had a knock-on affect for Cable &
Wireless customers globally, including Guernsey, who were not able
to use their BlackBerries from the morning of 23 August, until the
service was restored at 12.30pm on the same day.
Engineers worked tirelessly to get the service
back up and running as quickly as was practically possible, given
the difficult circumstances.
‘Like everyone else, our initial concern was
for our colleagues and friends who were in the middle of this
natural disaster,’ said Paul Savvides, head of mobile at Cable
& Wireless Guernsey.
‘Our account managers tried to contact
all customers to explain the situation, which was unfortunately
very much out of our control. Some customers may have experienced
difficulties accessing or retrieving information from their
BlackBerries when the service was first back up. This was due to
the large backlog of data waiting to be delivered which caused the
network to become unstable. This was resolved during the course of
yesterday afternoon and normal service was back in operation by
10pm last night. We were extremely grateful to our customers
for their patience and understanding during this time.’