Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago customers nationwide lost bmobile service on the morning of August 26 after breaks were discovered in the company’s fibre network at three locations along the East-West Corridor.

Public Utilities Minister Barry Padarath said TSTT chairman Kern Dass and acting chief executive officer Reza Hosein told him the breaks occurred at 6 a.m. Technicians were dispatched to all three sites to assess the damage, and Padarath said around 11 a.m. that the company expected to restore full service within a few hours. Service was restored later that day.

TSTT’s Contact Centre and its 824-TSTT line were among the customer support channels affected, the company said in a statement. It added that repair crews would continue working given the extent of the damage, even after services came back online.

Padarath said technicians were also trying to determine whether the breaks resulted from vandalism. He noted the timing followed a separate case just days earlier involving the theft of copper belonging to Amplia and TSTT, raising the question of whether the fibre damage was connected.

“This possibly could be another situation of that, or any other type of activity, to disrupt the services of TSTT,” Padarath said, while cautioning that he did not want to speculate on a motive while the matter was still under investigation.

The disruption spread well beyond TSTT’s own subscribers. The Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation said the public could face delays accessing Licensing Division services because of the fibre disruption at one of its service providers, and said it was working with that provider to restore normal operations.

The Children’s Authority of Trinidad and Tobago reported that its 996 and 800-2014 hotlines went down. The authority directed the public to an alternate number, 627-0748 extensions 40996 or 40997, as well as email and its online reporting portal, while its provider worked to fix the issue.

First Citizens’ 62-FIRST call centre also went offline, with the bank redirecting customers to 223-4322.

Caribbean Airlines Jetpak said it experienced intermittent connectivity problems across the country. Its website and app remained accessible, but the company warned that payment processing with drivers and at pickup offices could be temporarily affected, resulting in delays for some transactions.

The outage was the second significant telecom disruption in Trinidad and Tobago in under two weeks. On August 13, Digicel Trinidad and Tobago reported an outage affecting mobile data, voice, ICT and fibre services. That disruption was fully resolved by about 4 p.m. the same day.

Joanne Ogeer, secretary-general of the Communication Workers Union, which represents TSTT employees, declined to comment when contacted.