The President of the American Samoa Hawaii Cable company, has given a detailed explanation of the fault in the undersea cable between American Samoa and Samoa, which caused an extended outage in Bluesky services earlier this week.
Toleafoa Douglas Creevey said in response to KHJ News questions that around 11:30 am on Monday, October 9th, engineers at the SAS (Samoa-American Samoa) Cable landing station at Bluesky Samoa premises reported a fault in the fibre terminal equipment cabinet in Apia.
The fault resulted in the disconnection of primary internet data services for the Samoa telecommunications and internet operators who are customers of ASH Cable Co, and also the loss of direct telecommunication links between Bluesky operators in Samoa and American Samoa.
This included long distance calls between the Samoas, prepaid calling in Samoa, and some Moana TV customer services.
Postpaid Mobile and fixed line telephone calling traffic were still operational in Samoa.
Toleafoa said from the time the fault was discovered, technical teams in both Samoa and American Samoa worked diligently to troubleshoot the cause and location where the fault was located, and then technically disabling the cable to make it safe for subsequent solutions proposed to restore services.
He explained that during the period of the fault resolution, critical internet data services in Samoa and international calling circuits between Upolu and Tutuila were progressively migrated to backup satellite circuits.
The President said ASH Cable greatly regrets the inconvenience to all affected customers during the 6 hour outage, and assures them they had full commitment of all technical support teams and experts working to restore services.
Toleafoa said, “ASH Cable and its customers Bluesky in American Samoa and Samoa appreciate customers’ understanding and assure them and the community that all measures were taken to best ensure uninterrupted services.”
KHJ News asked since the undersea cable is aging, is it logical to expect more outages like this in the future?
“ASH Cable wisheS to clarify that this incident was not due to any aging submarine cable system. It was an unforeseen and unplanned equipment fault that unfortunately took some time to securely recover services, “said Toleafoa.
He said ASH Cable Co. does wish to report that the data Terminal Equipment in the cable landing stations at both ends of the SAS Cable is currently undergoing a full replacement for an upgrade with modern equipment of much larger capacity to cater for future cable data capacity and traffic demands between the Samoas for many years to come.
BlueSky American Samoa posted information about the outage on its Facebook page and also reached out to customers via its call center,
The President of ASH Cable pledged that ASH Cable Co and Bluesky remain committed to all their customers and the community of both Samoa and American Samoa “to always delivering our best.”
