KINGSTON, Jamaica — Telecommunications company Digicel reported 26 per cent of its mobile network as being offline Tuesday morning, in large part due to the widespread loss of power.

“There’s a further 209 sites running on generators and nine on batteries. For fibre to home (cable) customers, we’re seeing 20 per cent [of] customers offline due to no power in their homes,” said Minister of Energy, Transport and Telecommunications, Daryl Vaz.

He was addressing a special media briefing Tuesday morning at the emergency operations centre of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management.

He said Digicel has indicated that its crews would work to address the most impacted areas first and, until power is restored by the Jamaica Public Service, will keep generators fuelled to ensure they are up and running.

Vaz said Digicel also informed that it was working with the Spectrum Management Authority (SMA) to increase its spectrum bandwidth channels, having had the experience from Hurricane Beryl that the mobile infrastructure recovers much quicker than the fixed infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Vaz informed that at 3:00 am Tuesday, he signed licences for additional spectrum for Liberty Caribbean, the parent company of telecommunications provider Flow.

“I’m awaiting Digicel to give them the same,” Vaz remarked.

For Flow, he shared, “I’m happy to say that Liberty Caribbean, operators of Flow Jamaica, is committed to play its part for Jamaica to recover quickly from the inevitable damage [that will come] following the passage of Hurricane Melissa.”

Vaz said that with the spectrum it has received, Flow will be bringing a new innovation, mobile connectivity via satellite, that will facilitate SMS and text messages to areas affected in the aftermath of the hurricane. This is being done in collaboration with Starlink.

“This partnership promises to seamlessly enable 4G LTE mobile customers to send text to their family and friends, even when the local network service is interrupted, so that’s huge,” said Vaz.

“This collaboration with Starlink reflects their commitment to the Caribbean and protecting Jamaica, so we look forward for that and we also look forward for Digicel to do the same, which will give us a lot more ability to communicate and to recover as quickly as possible,” he added.

— Lynford Simpson