Globe telecom outage: shuts down Visayas and Mindanao services

I have a Globe SIM and also use Globe WiMax services.

Both are unusable today due to a severe fiber cut that's affecting the telco company's subscriber base in parts of Visayas and Mindanao.

GMA News had an article today that described the problem:

A severed fiber optic cable has caused service interruptions in the operations of Globe Telecom in the Visayas and Mindanao regions, preventing users from sending text messages, making calls, and surfing the Internet, a company spokesperson said.

Provinces such as Agusan (del Norte and del Sur), Davao, and Cebu were among the ones affected with a blanket service interruption.

Charo Logarta-Lagamon, external affairs head of the corporate communications division of Globe, confirmed in a phone interview that a cut in one of the company's undersea fiber cables caused the outage.

Logarta, however, stressed that these cables are not ordinarily seen hanging on lamp posts, where electric cables are typically found.

"These cables are either under the sea or in remote areas, which is very hard to get to," she clarified.

From the time of this blog post, it's almost been 12 hours since this outage occurred. Typically, simple cuts are fixed within a couple hours. Whatever happened, it's some serious stuff.

In a time when PLDT is buying out Sun Cell to further solidify its monopoly in the Philippines telco market (PLDT also owns SMART), this severe outage comes at a bad time.  The majority of mobile users in the Philippines are prepaid subscribers -- that means their loyalty is totally dependent on service quality.