Telecommunications here are appalling

All last week the awful Internet speed went from FLOW;s slow to packing up altogether for intermittent periods of a minute to 15 minutes.

I was therefore astonished to read a representative from FLOW inform CNS “there had been no problems with its internet service recently but that the customer service centre in Jamaica was impacted by staff shortages due to the warnings regarding Hurricane Matthew”.

What a puzzling statement. There are no issues with the Internet so calling their service centre in Jamaica to report there is wouldn’t help because they are short staffed because of Matthew. So FLOW here wouldn’t no would they?

“Whenever we have service affecting outages, we inform customers via the IVR at the Contact Centre, on social media and via texts,” the spokesperson said.

Via text? Just like they sent out texts to everyone the last time they had a major problem with their telephone system recently!

I have to say I don’t have much faith in the ongoing talks Minister Kurt Tibbetts said in the Legislative Assembly he is having about the 10GB speeds customers are paying for and getting only 1.5GB. How many years has that been going on? Maybe not 10GB but certainly a lot more than 1.5GB.

With the over the air system that Logic have it is impossible to guarantee any Internet speed. The more people who use the system the slower the speed no matter what you sign up for.

The appalling admission that “many telecommunication firms operating in the Cayman Islands have licences that require them to build out fibre-optic networks across all the islands but NONE of them have met their agreed target dates” is staggering.

And if CUC are involved in the chain with the poles and power network the situation will never be resolved quickly. Their subsidiary Datalink owns them.

The only way to make the companies to wake up is not the threats of fines because that will just be passed on to the customers when every company is involved in this charade, it is to take licences away. Even that is difficult when FLOW owns the gateway that links telecommunications with the rest of the world.

Tibbetts has confidence in the current ICTA director to sort the issues and find a resolution so we can all sleep easy now.
Or continue to experience the appalling service and complain to someone in Jamaica who is actually at FLOW’s Contact Centre. If that will ever flow to anyone here in Cayman is questionable because at the moment FLOW believes there are no problems with the Internet now or in the past.