Seychelles navigates telecommunication hurdles with swift provider responses |07 March 2024
Yesterday morning almost marked the second darkest day in the history of digital evolution in Seychelles as internet services where either extremely slow or not working at all.
There were also reports of telecommunication issues that were transpiring throughout the country.
Seychelles NATION reached out to two main service providers namely Cable and Wireless Seychelles and Airtel Seychelles to find out the cause of the outage.
It should be noted that the interruptions were affecting mainly Cable and Wireless Seychelles’ customers.
In a press release issued late yesterday afternoon, Cable and Wireless Seychelles confirmed its customers had been experiencing issues due to the downtimes in services, specifically affecting eTopup, home and wireless broadband, and mobile data. The company first and foremost extended an apology to the citizens of Seychelles due to the recent inconveniences.
“At CWS, we understand the importance of staying connected and we regret any disruptions caused by the recent system update that is still underway,” said the press release.
Chief executive, George D’Offay, is quoted as stating: “We want to issue an apology to all our valued customers, as we had hoped to limit the customer impact caused by these downtimes. We are nearing the completion of our system update and want to reassure customers that our teams are committed to working hard to restore our affected services to meet all their needs.”
Furthermore, as a result of the update, CWS regrets to inform the population that several facilities are temporarily not operational, such as MyCare, Kiosks, and eShop, added the press release.
The company announced that its team has made significant progress, and the upgraded version of facilities will be restored during the week.
Shoaib Khan, chief technical officer at CWS, affirmed that these upgrades are crucial in enhancing the experiences and reliability of CWS services.
In addition, he clarified that the good news is that major upgrades have been successfully completed. “Presently, we are diligently addressing any remaining issues, which we anticipate resolving in the upcoming days,” he stated.
“We want to reassure our customers that our dedicated team is working tirelessly to rectify these concerns and restore all services to their optimal state.”
In light of the challenges faced, CWS has extended the opening hours of its Customer Service Centres on Mahé, Praslin, and La Digue to thoroughly attend to customer queries. CWS technicians will also be available to carry out home visits to assess any concerns which may arise.
Meanwhile, brand and marketing communications manager from Airtel Seychelles, Jude Valmont, from Airtel, confirmed its services “are completely up and running” and the company did not have any glitches yesterday morning.
With regard to the recent reports of damaged submarine cables in the Red Sea, Mr Valmont reassured the customers that the incident did not affect their service.
“In light of the recent damages to the submarine cables in the Red Sea area, we want to assure everyone that through proactive network planning, actions and systems were earlier put in place to ensure such challenges cause no disruption in network services to our customers,” said Mr Valmont.
“We fully understand the importance of a reliable data network for our customers, and we would like to reassure them that we remain committed to providing the best possible service under all uncertain circumstances,” he added.
It was reported in the international news that Houthis had cut global internet cables in the Red Sea affecting four out of the 15 underwater cables providing service to Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
By Sunny Esparon/ CWS press release/ Airtel Seychelles