Logic Communications has urged customers with complaints about internet speeds to contact them so they can address the issues on a case-by-case basis.

But Frank Amaral, chief executive officer of KeyTech, Logic’s parent company, admitted this week that the issues were “nothing new”.

And he said the company was looking to credit the bills of customers hit by an e-mail outage.

Problems have been reported recently from a number of users island-wide.

“This is a commonly reported issue with both us and other companies here, the US and the rest of the world,” said Mr Amaral.

“We are already moving forward with a huge investment to basically redo a huge part of the outside plant, but it’s a multi, multi-month process across the entire island.

“We know there are issues, for sure, and we have a huge investment planned to fix this in the long term, but in the meanwhile it’s something we have to deal with on a case-by-case basis.

“We are also doing a full review of the cable television product. I think people should be quite happy with what comes out of that, but these are long-term investments we are talking about, and in this industry these things take a while to put together.”

The company has come under fire by customers on various online forums for a number of issues. Complaints have been voiced on slow internet speeds, “blocked” football matches on CableVision and even the company’s technical assistance.

One customer complained that he was paying for 8mbps and receiving 1mbp along with outages over the last weekend, while another complained about a lack of open communication about football coverage.

More recently, the company faced several issues its e-mail system starting with a “critical hardware failure” on September 4. While service was partially restored the following day, it ran in a “degraded” state for several days until equipment could be replaced.

The issue was followed by a second temporary outage, which struck customers on Monday morning.

Mr Amaral said the company was looking at giving some form of credit to customers impacted by the e-mail outages.

He said they would be reaching out to customers affected by the recent outages soon.

“Our current systems are a bit tough to get through in terms of getting data about which customers were impacted,” he said. “A part of the trouble is that e-mail is a free service. If you have ISP service, you get e-mail, so one part is trying to establish a value about what the stand-alone e-mail service is. The bulk of what people pay for when they get ISP service is the internet part, not the e-mail part, so that is a challenge.

“We want to give something that is meaningful, that won’t insult people when they are notified. We are going to be implementing a communication to those affected about what the service credit is all about. There will be a credit going through to people’s bills.”

Mr Amaral added that a new e-mail system was being established in the coming months to ensure such outages do not reoccur.

“It’s something that has been planned for a while, which will be a brand new platform with full redundancy that will alleviate the issue that we had over the long weekend and keep it from happening again,” he said.

He also responded to common criticism about internet speeds and service across the island, saying such issues are often limited to certain areas or even specific homes and so customers should report their issues so they can be addressed.

“There are things we can check from the office, but often it may require a truck to go to the customer’s home,” he said. “And a lot of the gear sits outside and things like the coaxial cable runs all the way to a person’s home.”

Mr Amaral noted complaints that CableVision had received about coverage — particularly with regard to English Premier League football. The company has announced that it would be making Flow Sports free to all customers until the end of October and introduce Flow Sports Premier soon to increase the number of matches aired on the island (see separate story).

Mr Amaral also denied the suggestion that cable services have been affected by the company’s merger with CableVision.

“Nothing has been changed in terms of how we source our content, how we rebroadcast it,” he said. “The people running our networks are all the same people.

“There are comments that the CellOne service is different but that network is totally independent, the people working on it are completely independent. It’s really just a perception thing, but the e-mail issue was a real issue and we have a plan to put in a brand new platform over the coming months.”