Telecommunications and internet access across the Island were severely disrupted yesterday after a major outage at the Bermuda Telephone Company.

People reported Bank of Butterfield ATMs were down, while shops could not process credit cards and businesses could not contact companies in other countries.

Although the problems were reported to have been fully fixed as of early evening yesterday, BTC could not put a figure on the number of people affected.

A source in the IT industry however suggested that up to 5,000 DSL (internet) customers and 12,000 cell phone users were affected over a six- to eight-hour period.

He claimed Digicel, Cellular One and Cable and Wireless were all hit by a service breakdown. Northrock customers were also affected.

Digicel's BlackBerry users were without Internet access until about 2 p.m.

Clifton Webb, marketing director for Digicel Bermuda, last night said: "It's affected us as we utilise BTC for transmission. People can still receive and make cell phone calls but it's affected the BlackBerry data on the Internet."

Mr. Webb said he could not disclose how many of Digicel's customers had been affected and was last night awaiting further feedback from BTC.

"I'm not at liberty to say how many customers but we do have a significant portion of BlackBerry users who were affected," he said.

"We're still trying to get all the facts on it from BTC."It is understood BTC experienced a major outage on their equipment between 3.30 a.m. and 3.40 a.m. yesterday.

The telecommunications services affected reportedly included: Digicel data and texting; CellularOne and Logic long distance telephone calls; Equant data network services; DSL (digital subscriber line) and IPLC (international private lease circuit line) customers.

Terence Burgess, Network Services Manager for TeleBermuda International Ltd, said last night: "We have received calls from our customers who were affected over the course of the day. I have tried to find out what different areas have been affected, but BTC just say they are busy trying to solve it at the moment.

"From our equipment here it looks like the outage was at about 3.40 a.m. and we understand it is still going on. BTC don't have an estimate yet on when the problem is going to be fixed."

Mr. Burgess said: "We provide long distance calls and Internet services so there are a lot of people who can't call, and this affects us financially. Many businesses have not been able to contact international corporate companies on the Internet or on a lease circuit (a direct computer connection), so this is affecting their business.

"From what I understand some of the stores in town can't use their credit card machines as that's done from abroad as well, so people are having to pay (using) cash or cheque.

"It has affected a lot of different types of service. Some people have Internet connection and others don't, and other people can use their telephone lines and others can't. At this point BTC hasn't disclosed what the situation is."

By 6.30 p.m last night, a BTC spokeswoman reported that the company had restored all data transmission following an interruption of service that began in the early hours of the morning.

"BTC Transmission engineers and our vendor, Alcatel-Lucent, have re-established all data paths. Engineers have identified and determined the location of the problem in our core network. BTC will now conduct a full investigation to determine the root cause of the interruption," she said.

Everyone at BTC would like to thank our customers for their patience.