Dear Sir,

Over the years, the telephone service from BTC has been exemplary — even during those storms when we have lost electric power. Sadly, those days seem to be only a distant memory ... as you will see from the following tale of woe.

Before Hurricane Humberto, I received a call regarding my BTC telephone service. An upgrade was available — normally costing $200, but free during this promotion.

Various inclusive plans were offered, in which I was not interested. However, I agreed to the free upgrade to Fibre-Optic. On September 11, a Digicel crew came, drilled a hole and installed a modem to which my four phones were linked. Some days later, when Humberto hit, I lost power — and my phone service!

We are now into the latter part of October and, although I can telephone out, no one can telephone me, with two exceptions: a friend who has Digicel phones, and my family in Britain, the latter because I have my long-distance service with TBI.

I have been once into the BTC/Digicel office, where I spent almost an hour, and over the course of about three weeks, I have made frequent phone calls, received promises — even being told that my phone was working (when it is not). The caller hears it ringing, not I.

To add to the woes, when one calls a number, one often gets a message, which basically says, “Your call cannot be connected at this time. Try again later.”

One can usually get the number on the second or third try, thus two or more calls are charged, instead of one. (What happened to the old “busy signal” when one just hung up?)

I have been promised my old landline back — but when? I don’t know! None of the very patient and courteous “telephone ladies” can give me any answer. They pass the message on, but nothing happens. When questioned, they admit that I am only one of many seniors who have expressed the need for a reliable phone service in power outages ... especially when we wear the ihelp-Life-Alert pendant.

My closing plea: will Digicel please restore the formerly great BTC telephone service Bermuda enjoyed for decades.

LINDA J. DE SILVA

Paget

Note: On Saturday, Mr Burchall of Digicel was able to arrange (remotely) the restoration of my telephone service, so I can now receive calls.