OfReg admits Maya-1 Cable had been damaged
(CNS): OfReg has said that an outage on a section of the Maya-1 undersea cable, which provides the Cayman Islands with international internet connections, has been resolved. An offshore repair was carried out in Mexico last week by the cable ship Wave Sentinel and a cable repair team, which restored full traffic service, officials stated. Although there had been problems with the cable since at least June, the utilities regulator denied that anything was wrong with it in July following a local internet service outage.
CNS has asked OfReg to explain the contradiction and why the outage was not made public. We are awaiting a response.
Maya-1 is one of the two undersea communication cables that connect Cayman to the world. The regulator said that during this undisclosed outage, communication was switched to the Cayman Jamaica Fibre System (CJFS). Now that Maya-1 has been repaired, internet traffic re-routing has ended and the country is back to full capacity.
“While Cayman maintained connectivity with the rest of the world, the outage on a portion of the cable in Mexican waters highlighted the need for discussion relating to cost and availability of alternate or redundant connectivity routes,” officials said in a press release.
“While monitoring the ongoing outage situation, OfReg actively engaged local and international stakeholders to ensure that the national interest of the Cayman Islands remained a priority for those involved in the restoration of the downed cable, in particular due to the length of time taken to carry out the cable repair when the outage was initially reported in late June 2024.”
OfReg met with senior executives from the Maya-1 Cable consortium member Liberty Networks, Cable and Wireless Networks and local internet service providers C3, Digicel, Flow and Logic earlier this month to discuss the status of the cable repair and a number of other issues. These included the commercial agreements currently in force, access to normal and redundant capacity on cables in the region, and operational performance of services provided.
OfReg Interim CEO Sonji Myles said that the regulator, which is subject to jurisdictional limitations, acts to ensure that Cayman’s international connectivity with the rest of the world is robust, effective and ultimately resilient.
“We are pleased to be able to bring interested parties together to discuss the issues and encouraged by the level of frank conversation and, in particular, the subsequent repair of the cable. Now that the cable is repaired, we will be focusing on addressing all of the other issues arising out of the discussions, which may lead to establishing a contemporary regulatory framework focused on international connectivity,” he said.
Myles stressed the significance of international connectivity as a key part of Cayman’s critical national infrastructure. “As an Island territory, international connectivity is critical for Cayman in that it underpins the socioeconomic fabric of the country by providing access to the internet for domestic and business users in the country, including the financial services industry, tourism, government, hospitals and schools.
“Any loss of service over these critical areas of infrastructure has the potential for severe consequences. We will continue to work with our licensees, cable owners, operators and other stakeholders to ensure that Cayman’s international connectivity ecosystem is effectively maintained, resilient and protected,” he noted.
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Category: Business, Private Sector Oversight, utilities
There we have it again plain as day , OfReg’s cadre of experts and appointees either need to backtrack on the Starlink subject altogether which I consider they have no choice into since the cable laying vessels have NO plans in place for further development and redundant infrastructure to the island (Source: Alcatel that operates such vessels) and their layering schedule shows nothing about coming close to the island before…2030!
If Ofreg’s decision makers were even remotely competent they would have taken steps to allay the situation!
OfReg isn’t only not only in dereliction of its mission but it also maintains by any means necessary the monopolies existing on the island, not only prohibiting competition but also hampering the capacity to build resilient infrastructure!
I setup for the sake of the argument a local caching DNS server as an experiment to allay the latency issues of existing servers and as if by magic my local network is 35 percent more responsive to requests! Latency dropped down on both IPV4 and V6 using an old x99 server platform ! (If memory serves, the X99 platform was released in 2014)
Anyone interested in repeating the process can read up here:
https://www.baeldung.com/linux/configure-dns-caching
All you have to do then is to assign a fixed IP to your caching service on your local network and setup the DHCP server of your router to provide the IP of your caching server and voila !
Another way to achieve this is to use NoIP to forward your traffic to an external source and configure your device to the server’s external address profile. It is clunky but it works for small businesses.
The other issue was a local internet provider issue, whereas this issue with the cable is an international one.
OfReg bashing is a lot of fun, but I think you’ll find that in a previous statement they said that the outage right before the recent storm was due to a local issue, not due to Maya-1. The local provider blamed may-1 on social media and then promptly took that post down when corrected, as it was an on-island issue, not related to Maya 1 at all.
“CNS has asked OfReg to explain the contradiction and why the outage was not made public. We are awaiting a response.”
Come see this response. Currently being written by their board attorney for sure.
Most likely Being contemplated:
“It was a miscommunication”. Or “the intern who gave that erroneous information has been terminated.” Or “someone will call you back with a statement.” Or “The Elected Minister in charge has redacted, for national security reasons, the reason why there was a media blackout, a contradiction.” 🤫😶🌫️
Starlink maybe?
What’s with Ofreg and “interim” CEOs?
Can anyone say… Starlink? Also, can OfReg stop making excuses and start working to have Starlink officially available (at a reasonable cost) in the Cayman Islands? I only pay US$45 to have the type of service that is costing CI$120 or more in the Cayman Islands.
We all knew OfReg being synonymous with ineffectiveness and redundancy but now telling straight face lies, really? I never would have guessed.
so OffReg either intentionally lied to us…leadership should be fired as they’ve proven to be untrustworthy or they had no idea what caused the outage… they are incompetent and should be fired.
Actually, if they lied, they should prosecuted. Maladministration can be a crime at common law.
Anyone else experiencing the 5G status through Digiel or FLOW? Seems to be completely different to 5G experienced elsewhere in the world or is it just me?
Sonji, can you check out how these service providers can sell a service that does not actually exist?
Both services for me had speed and stability/up time issues on rollout. For the last month or so it’s been good to great where I travel on the island. 5G isn’t fully available in all areas of the island as yet. Soon come? What say you, OfReg?
“Sell a Service that does not actually exist “.
LMAO>> THIS is Cayman at its best…