Hiccups on the internet gateway serving the island's 130,000 customers continued to plague Cable & Wireless Jamaica Ltd yesterday.

"Another malfunction on the internet gateway. has just developed, setting back earlier progress reported," the telecoms company said in a release.

The company first notified the public of hiccups on the system Wednesday night, saying the service had been slow over the past few days, especially during peak hours.

"The situation," C&WJ said then, "which is outside of the company's control, appears to be related to problems on the overseas end of the international submarine transmission systems."

At one point yesterday, there was some optimism that the problem was being resolved but by late evening, the company was reporting another setback.

"The latest problem affects a portion of the international Maya 1 submarine fibre cable system, a major component of the internet transmission network serving Jamaica," said a C&W release.

The cables run from Florida to Jamaica.
One C&WJ customer told the Observer that her office had not been able to use its e-mail or surf the internet since Tuesday.
Five per cent of the population is connected to the internet, according to a government study done last year. Though there are scores of internet providers in Jamaica, most connect through C&WJ,which has a virtual monopoly on fibre exiting the island.

The slow down in the Maya 1 cable coincides two major IT international developments. This week, US and British authorities, having realised a fundamental flaw in the way that computers communicate across the internet, held secret meetings as they tried to prevent disruptions in the world wide web, according to an AP report.

The second factor was that Paul Watson, who uncovered the flaw late last year, had promised to divulge the details of the flaw at a conference in Canada yesterday. AP News reported Watson as predicting that hackers who left that conference would be able to use the information within five minutes to hack the internet.

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