BTC CEO Francis Mussenden yesterday blamed ?technology? as being the cause of loss of phone services for just over two hours to approximately 60 Hamilton area businesses.

The problems yesterday came hard on the heels of the loss of high speed DSL service to residents in the West End on Monday.

A press released issued by the company said: ?BTC engineers worked late Monday evening to establish Internet connections back through the server in the Paget exchange office.?

BTC has also advised customers who continue to experience an Internet service outage to first attempt to reset their modem by powering it off for five minutes. If unsuccessful, call 611, BTCs Repair Service.

The 60 customers reported the loss around 11.30 a.m. yesterday. BTC spokeswoman Ona Fletcher said: ?T1 circuits or voice circuits to business customer?s PBX?s were impacted when the supporting network equipment stopped processing telephone calls to these customers.

?BTC?s engineers assessed the situation with the assistance from Nortel engineers in the United States and were able to restore service to all customers by 2 p.m.?

Mr. Mussenden added: ?It is disappointing when technology isn?t as perfect as we would like it to be, since it is the backbone of many of our businesses. Please accept my apology for any interruption in service and any inconvenience this may have caused.?