The Ministry of Telecommunications is probing why the Island’s telephone networks became overloaded during the tidal wave panic that swept the Island at the weekend.

Director of Telecommunications William Francis told The Royal Gazette yesterday that he had asked all the cell phone providers in Bermuda to produce a report about what happened to their network when rumours began to spread on Saturday morning of a giant wave heading to shore.

A number of people have reported that they had problems making calls on both landlines and cell phones during the height of the panic, which turned out to be a false alarm. Some cell phones received “network busy” messages when users tried to make a call. Denis Rowe, chief radio officer at Bermuda Maritime Operations Centre, said some people visited the station in person on Saturday because they couldn’t make calls on their cell phones.

And a spokesman at Government House, the Governor’s official residence, said the network and communication difficulties experienced on Saturday needed to be addressed. Mr. Francis said: “What we are doing is waiting for a report from each of the carriers now to just get information from them on the exact impact on their networks.

“We have asked for a preliminary report sometime tomorrow because what we normally try to do is give the carriers a breather after something like that and make sure their operations are back to normal because we try to get a full report.”

Mr. Francis said the likely cause of callers’ problems was simply the sheer volume of telephone traffic as Islanders tried to pass on the warning about the wave that never was.

“We didn’t receive any complaints at the Ministry at all,” he said. “It’s possible that everybody just assumed it was because of the congestion. I have heard through individuals that there were some problems but at this point we are not sure which carriers they were.

“It might have been one carrier or it could have been a network problem that somebody experienced. Once we get the reports in from our carriers then we will be able to know categorically what their experiences were.”

Michael Leverock, chief operations officer at cell phone provider Cellular One, said he was aware of people having problems with cell phones and landlines.

“There was some congestion,” he said. “It was noticeable, which was to be expected.” Mr. Leverock explained that networks are designed to cope with certain optimal busy times for calling but that Saturday’s experience was out of the ordinary.”As much as you try and effect in a bit of ‘padding’, so to speak, you still get some degree of congestion as was the case with 9/11. It’s just like if you have all of a sudden everyone heading to Hamilton at the same time then you are going to get massive congestion on the roads. Under the normal course of business we don’t have these issues.”

He said the phone networks could be modified to cope with increased demand. But he added: “There’s an economic factor to that. I think it’s something to be looked at. Hopefully we can find some way to help ensure that the level of congestion doesn’t occur for future times like this. This one, it was really a surprise.”