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Cell phone services weather storm well

The Island's mobile phone providers suffered little impact from Hurricane Igor with Digicel and CellularOne both reporting minimal interruption to their service.

Despite being subjected to 48 hours of torrential rains and winds reaching sustained hurricane force strengths, Digicel said that the majority of its customer base was able to stay connected during the storm, with very little interruption to their service, while the company's hurricane preparedness measures enabled it to maintain the testability of its core network across the Island.

At 1.30 p.m. on Monday, most of Digicel's sites were working Island-wide, providing coverage to the majority of its customers. The company said it was aware that a small number of residents might still be experiencing difficulties with their services and that every effort was being made to restore these areas to fully operational levels as soon as possible.

Digicel's Court Street store is open for customers wanting to buy prepaid credit or carry out other transactions.

As part of the company's hurricane contingency plan, generators were installed to cover most of its cell sites and continued to keep them running at their maximum capacity, despite the loss of electricity experienced in certain areas.

Digicel's CEO Wayne Caines said: "It is our aim to help our customers and Digicel is heartened that you could rely on us during Hurricane Igor and we will continue to work hard to ensure our network is fully restored for those experiencing service interruptions."

A spokesman for CellularOne said the company had experienced no major issues, with only one small outage in Town Hill, Flatts due to an electrical fault.

He said that 96 percent of the network was up and running as of yesterday afternoon and there had been no damage to any of its towers.

A press Statement from the KeyTech Group of Companies said that as of 5.30 p.m. on Monday, BTC's core network "was up and running, although individual customers may still be experiencing outages".

The statement continued: "Anyone experiencing an outage should call 295 1001 from an alternate line."

The statement said that all Logic Communications offices and retail stores will be open for business as usual today and that M3 wireless offices and retail stores would also be open for business as usual today.