KINGSTON, Jamaica — The National Commercial Bank (NCB) this morning issued an apology to customers who were inconvenienced last Friday after its network went down.

In a release a short while ago, the bank said the downtime across its network was due to road construction being carried out on the Mandela Highway, which resulted in damage to Flow’s fibre optic cables.

This, it said, affected connectivity with their primary data centre and resulted in issues with voice calls, which continued through to Saturday, as the circuit at Flow that carries all NCB numbers, was affected.

The bank acknowledged that this is the fourth occasion that road repairs have negatively impacted their network, with this issue being the most severe because of the disruption to their primary and secondary channels.

It assured customers, however, that they are actively addressing these issues in order to ensure confidence in their network and to create an unparalleled service experience.

A few of the steps the bank said it will be actively pursuing to address any future such incidents include engaging the Government, National Works Agency (NWA) and other relevant parties regarding the disruptions to the network that result if there are insufficient precautions taken during road construction.

Building out additional channels to enhance redundancy in the event of similar network damages in the future and upgrading IT applications to improve reliability, consistency and ease of operating on our channels.