Broadband Outage in Metro Panama Irritates Customers

Thousands of Cable Onda broadband internet customers took to Twitter to vent their frustration over a prolonged outage that began Saturday afternoon in the Panama City metropolitan area and lasted more than 12 hours into Sunday morning. The outage also left an unknown number of ATMs unable to reach their servers.

The outage began around 3:00 p.m. when Cable Onda acknowledged unidentified problems that were affecting multiple locations.

Dear Clients:

At the moment, we’re exeriencing adverse effects in multiple areas, including our customer service channels.

Our engineers are working to resolve it as soon as possible.

We offer apologies for the inconvenience.

Cable Onda Customer Service.

By 5:00 p.m., Cable Onda blamed unexplained “electrical problems at its transmission center” for what it called a temporary outage.

Cable Onda announces to its clients that this afternoon electrical problems at its transmission center, causing a temporary loss of Cable TV and internet services in some areas.

Currently services are being restored gradually in all the affected areas.

The company is grateful for your understanding.

Cable Onda Customer Service.

By 9:00 p.m. Cable Onda announced that its engineers restored all services in all affected areas, but connection to the internet remained intermittent throughout the night.

Cable Onda announces that we have satisfactorily resolved the electrical problem which affected our transmission center in the afternoon.

Currently all services have been completely restored. If any problem still persists, you can report it to our customer service line (390-7555) from 6:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m.

The company appreciates your understanding.

Cable Onda Customer Service

Angry customers had already taken to Twitter to voice their frustration. And by Sunday morning, “Cable Onda” became the top trending topic in Panama.

Cable onda eng (engineers) right now

Referring to the DDoS attack on Dyn servers which knocked out services to Twitter, Netflix, PayPal, and other sites, @Rauloo quipped that:

Cable Onda’s signal is so slow that it must have been affected by yesterday’s global hack

@isaias2219 referred to Cable & Wireless, Cable Onda’s competitor, in the tweet that wished Cable Onda good luck.

Good luck. I’m Cable & Wirelss, “Cable Onda.”

I hope Cable Onda will give us [extra] megs or a free month for its serious mistake.

By 8:00 a.m. Sunday, the storm of complaints had subsided as internet, TV, and telephone services were being restored. But contrite Cable Onda’s public apology did little to appease customers demanding a discount on their monthly bill.

Dear Clients,

Yesterday afternoon our network experienced electrical failures causing the loss of cable TV, internet, and telephone services in various areas.

Said problem was resolved, and the services were restored completely.

We regret the inconvenience this situation could have caused, and we reiterate our commitment to continue working to serve you the best way possible.

It remained unclear what type of “electrical problems” caused the outage or whether the outage occurred at a high-capacity backbone or a network access point. The outage also affected an unknown number of ATMs that could not communicate with the servers.

Some ATMs were out of service because of telecommunication problems with Telecarrier, La Prensa reported Saturday evening. Telecarrier, which merged with Cable Onda in 2009, provides enterprise-level network infrastructure, IT, and backup services.

Cable Onda has been gradually expanding since it absorbed Telecarrier in 2009. In 2010, Cable Onda acquired Advanced Communications Network, which held about 2 percent of the market, as a wholly owned subsidiary.