Bermuda Telephone Company (BTC) last night apologised after more than 60 businesses suffered problems with their communication systems yesterday.

The majority of customers were back up and working last night, but spokeswoman Ona Fletcher said technicians were working around the clock to ensure the remainder had their service resumed as soon as possible.

For each customer the problems were believed to be different, but some saw their Internet service go down.

She said at about midnight on Monday, BTC had to perform emergency maintenance to its ATM frame relay network.

"This was the result of some faulty elements within the network affecting 67 frame relay customers (businesses)," said Ms Fletcher.

"BTC has been working with these customers throughout the day on Tuesday to re-route their frame relay circuits over BTC's ATM network, and BTC apologises for any inconvenience this may have caused."

She said it was not known what had caused caused the breakdown in the network, but said it had affected businesses' data service, which could have impacted each company differently.

However, BTC called each firm yesterday to clarify their problems and to assure them that the problems were being rectified.

The Royal Gazette understands that some customers had their service restored last night, while some others were still waiting.

Ms Fletcher said technicians had worked through the early hours of yesterday to fix the problem and would continue to do so until power was totally restored.