Cut-off customers of telecoms firm Digicel should be back online today, the company said.The telecoms firm blamed the weeklong service outage on “catastrophic damage” caused by an excavation company contracted to power company Belco. Donn Foggo, the marketing and product manager for Digicel, said that 75 per cent of customers affected by the outage that started last week had been brought back online. He added that BTC and Digicel were “confident that the remaining 25 per cent of affected customers will be back online” by today. Mr Foggo said that BTC and Digicel were first alerted to the service problems on October 21. He said that crews established that a fibre break near a manhole on the Railway Trail was to blame. Mr Foggo said that a section of badly damaged cable was found soon afterwards. He added: “It was apparent that the damaged cables were intentionally buried and concealed by vegetation. It was noted by BTC and Digicel workers that a newly installed Belco pole was near the damaged cable.” Mr Foggo said that Belco was contacted and confirmed that ACS Excavating had worked in the area on their behalf. He said that workers from ACS returned to excavate the site that night and that work began to restore customer service the next day. Mr Foggo said that restoration work was taking longer than expected because of the seriousness of the damage. He added: BTC and Digicel understand the inconvenience that the catastrophic damage caused by ACS Excavation has caused and apologise for the delayed time without service.” Mr Foggo denied that talks taking place over worker wages had played any part in the delay of service restoration. He said: “While BTC is currently in discussion with the union in relation to the member’s yearly wage adjustment, that is not to be credited as the reason for this outage.” A Belco spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.