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Thousands of Channel Islanders ‘offline’ for six hours

Thousands of Channel Islanders ‘offline’ for six hours

Monday 13 July 2020

Thousands of Channel Islanders ‘offline’ for six hours

Monday 13 July 2020


Engineers had to work through the night to get thousands of Channel Islanders back online after a JT outage hit internet, mobile and landline services, including 999 numbers, ATMs and airport check-ins.

Around two thirds (65.4%) of islanders were affected when systems went down around 18:55, as well as JT customers in Guernsey.

Services returned to normal around 00:55 this morning (Monday 13 July).

This was followed by a 20-minute outage at 04:00, but this only affected around a quarter of subscribers.

The cause of the fault remains unclear, but JT says it is investigating. 

The critical six-hour failure hit the Emergency Services, with islanders unable to call 999 via a landline. 

However, Police reminded islanders on Facebook that it remained possible to do so via mobile. 

New Era Vets were also unable to operate their emergency line, so instead advised those with animals in urgent need of assistance to visit the practice directly.

The JSPCA, which also operates an emergency service for animals, experienced similar issues and advised islanders to contact them via Facebook.

Islanders reported being able to use cash points or card machines on social media, while others bemoaned difficulties with the lights and heating in their internet-controlled ‘smart homes’.

Passengers waiting to board a flight last night were also impacted due to resulting difficulties with the check-in process. They were held outside security while airport staff tried to find a solution.

Airport Runway

Pictured: The airport's check-in process was affected. 

JT’s Managing Director Daragh McDermott this morning commented: “I’d like to apologise to our customers for the problem with JT services yesterday evening.

"JT’s networks are now working normally again after the problem, which affected landlines, mobiles and internet services in Jersey and Guernsey. Our engineers got to work immediately, and made sure services were running again as quickly as they could."

Daragh_McDermott.jpg

Pictured: JT's Managing Director, Daragh McDermott, apologised for the outage.

He added: “We are now isolating the root cause and putting measures in place to prevent it happening again."

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