Manx Telecom has been advised by the island’s telecoms regulator to make further investment in its network to prevent a repeat of the broadband outage which hit thousands of homes and businesses.

The Isle of Man’s Communications Commission made the recommendation after a formal investigation into the disruption ’that impacted upon a ’significant number of the island’s consumers’.

The statutory body, which is responsible for the regulation of telecommunications and broadcasting in the island, found that overall Manx Telecom ’did not breach its regulatory obligations’.

But it warned that it would ’likely constitute a breach of licence conditions should a similar incident arise in future’.

It’s estimated that around 7,000 users in homes and businesses were affected by the outage which began on Monday, August 24, and as the commission’s report says, ’Manx Telecom worked over the subsequent days to find and resolve the cause, with service fully restored by September 3’.

The commission said telecoms is of ’critical importance to all aspects of the island’s society and economy and it is therefore important that there is appropriate scrutiny of significant events of this nature’.

It says that ’having fully examined the information provided the commission finds that Manx Telecom did take all reasonably practicable steps to bring the network back online after the outage occurred’.

The report, published on the commission’s website, says: ’Typically, when a hardware failure such as this occurs, the equipment identifies there is a fault and raises an alarm.

’On this occasion, the hardware failure was "silent", meaning the hardware "did not know" it was malfunctioning, and as such, no faults or alarms were raised within Manx Telecom to indicate that there was a fault, what the fault was, or where the fault arose.

’It therefore took longer for Manx Telecom to identify the source of the outage and subsequently rectify it than it would a typical fault; engineers from Manx Telecom and its equipment provider had to check for, and eliminate all the possible faults that could have occurred, until it had been located.’

The commission points out in the report: ’Taking in to account that the fault that occurred is rare, it is difficult to conclude that Manx Telecom did not take all reasonable practicable steps to maintain the network. However the commission is of the view that this would not hold true going forward as this type of fault is now a "known fault", and would likely constitute a breach of licence conditions should a similar incident arise in future.’

The commission acknowledged that it will take time to put in place the appropriate measures to protect against similar incidents in future.

Manx Telecom responded by issuing this statement to iomotoday.co.im: ’Manx Telecom welcomes the publication of the Communications Commission’s report into the broadband outage experienced in the Isle of Man in late August 2020.

’We consider it to be an accurate account and agree with the commission’s finding that Manx Telecom took all reasonable practicable steps to bring the network back on online after the outage occurred.

’As stated in the report, the situation was caused by a "silent" hardware fault which took some time to identify due to its unusual nature.

’Until the fault had been pinpointed and understood, there were significant concerns that switching traffic to another part of the network would duplicate the fault and potentially disrupt the service to more customers. Once the issue was identified, steps were taken to re-route affected customers as quickly as possible.

’Regarding the Communications Commission’s recommendation on investment, Manx Telecom had already decided to bring forward planned investment in the Broadband Network Gateway - the access point through which subscribers connect to broadband services. This is to ensure we continue to meet and manage the changes in how people on the island are using broadband following the onset of Covid-19.

’In particular, we have already started upgrading equipment which was not due to be replaced until the end of 2021. This work will now commence in 2020 and is in line with recommendations made by the Communications Commission.

’Manx Telecom is committed to providing a resilient and reliable telecommunications service to the Isle of Man.

’Along with the investment into traditional broadband services, we have recently pledged to accelerate fibre broadband rollout, both through our own programme and through the Isle of Man Government’s National Broadband Plan. This will be key to enabling future technologies.’