Phone company to review procedures Stabroek News January 16, 2001 In the wake of the nine-hour shutdown of Internet services here on January 5, the phone company GT&T has agreed to review its monitoring, notification and problem tracking procedures to avoid a recurrence. This was revealed in a joint statement yesterday by the four Internet Service Providers (ISPs) clarifying their position on the January 5 disruption. In the statement from Guyana Net, Inter.Net.Works, Solutions2000 and Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP), it was disclosed that on January 10, the ISPs met with the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) to discuss quality of service views and strategies to prevent "prolonged Internet downtime". GT&T links the ISPs to the Internet. The ISPs said that GT&T conceded that communication from it to the ISPs on the day of the nine-hour breakdown could have been more effective. The phone company in an earlier press release had stated, that the ISPs had been properly notified of the breakdown and unavailability of service, and that contact was maintained throughout the day on the status of the failure. The ISPs had initially stated that they had not been kept up to date on the cause for the disruption after an initial call to notify that the service would be cut. According to yesterday's statement, GT&T had acknowledged that the ISPs should have been better informed at the outset of the problem and during the outage. The two sides, it was said, have agreed on a framework for the strengthening of operating procedures geared towards timely fault reporting and the resolution of problems which affect the delivery of internet service. The ISPs noted with appreciation the expression of goodwill by the phone company through its intention to grant credit for loss of service during the outage. Follow the goings-on in Guyana in Guyana Today