Outages put Cayman’s internet resilience rules back in focus

Two recent Logic service interruptions have drawn fresh attention to how Cayman’s telecoms outages are reported, monitored and explained to customers.

The Utility Regulation and Competition Office confirmed it was advised of a Logic outage on Sunday, 12 April, affecting internet, TV and voice services in George Town. An email response from the regulator stated, “The interruption began at approximately 11.40am and was resolved by 1.13pm. Around 5,600 customers were affected, with the cause attributed to a localised power issue at a Logic data centre.”

URCO was also advised of a separate Logic outage two days earlier, beginning at approximately 11.19am on Friday, 10 April, and lasting until 3.10am on Saturday, 11 April. That interruption affected internet, TV and voice services for around 298 customers in the South Sound area. The regulator said, “the cause was attributed to an overhead fibre cable cut during tree-trimming activities”.

Digicel did not report any outages over the same period. However, when contacted, the company indicated that a cooling issue at an off-island data centre in Jamaica may have had the potential to affect Internet Protocol Television services in Cayman. As a precaution, services were migrated to a data centre in Miami. The regulator said, “Based on the information available, URCO does not expect a formal outage report from Digicel in this instance.”

The episodes underline how dependent Cayman now is on stable digital infrastructure, and how quickly a local fault, cable cut, or off-island technical issue can raise wider questions about resilience.

Outage reporting rules

Under URCO’s 2023 outage reporting rules, telecommunications licensees must report significant service interruptions. Whether an outage is reportable depends on factors including duration, customer impact, geography, the service affected and whether critical infrastructure or emergency services may be involved.

For unplanned outages that meet the reporting threshold, providers must submit an initial notification to URCO within 60 minutes of discovering the issue. They are also required to notify affected subscribers within 60 minutes, where reasonable and where the outage itself does not prevent them from doing so.

If an outage lasts more than four hours, providers must submit updates every four hours until service is restored. A resolution notification must be filed within 60 minutes of restoration, followed by a detailed outage report within 14 calendar days.

That final report must include the time of onset and restoration, services affected, geographic area, number of customers affected, cause of the outage, corrective action taken and steps intended to prevent a recurrence.

The rules also cover planned outages. Providers must notify URCO and customers seven calendar days in advance for scheduled maintenance likely to cause a reportable service disruption. Urgent planned outages must be reported as soon as the work is approved.

URCO says outage information is essential to monitor the reliability and security of communications infrastructure, assess repeated failures and determine whether regulatory intervention or industry cooperation is needed.

Failure to comply with the rules may result in administrative fines under the Utility Regulation and Competition Act.