On a recent weekday morning, thousands of consumers and enterprises across Trinidad and Tobago were thrown into digital disarray when widespread outages struck Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT) and its consumer brand bmobile. The disruption was traced back to intentional breaks to the company’s core fibre optic infrastructure at three separate sites along the country’s busy East-West Corridor, triggering immediate investigations into potential vandalism.
Public Utilities Minister Barry Padarath confirmed the incident in an interview with local outlet Express, noting that he had been briefed directly by TSTT Chairman Kern Dass and Acting Chief Executive Officer Reza Hosein soon after the breaks were discovered at 6 a.m. Speaking by 11 a.m. the same day, Padarath said certified technical teams had already deployed to all three damage sites to map the scope of destruction and evaluate the total impact on regional and national networks. At that time, investigators had not yet ruled out vandalism as a cause, and Padarath noted the suspicious timing of the incident: it came just three days after law enforcement made a major breakthrough in a high-profile case involving large-scale theft of copper cable owned by both TSTB and rival telecom provider Amplia.
“This possibly could be another situation of that, or any other type of activity, to disrupt the services of TSTT,” Padarath stated, though he cautioned against premature conclusions while the probe remained ongoing. “We do not want to speculate on the motive behind the incident while the investigation is ongoing,” he added.
The outage rippled across multiple sectors beyond residential mobile and internet service, disrupting critical government functions and private sector operations alike. The Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation announced early yesterday that public access to Licensing Division services would be slowed or unavailable as a result of the third-party fibre disruption, noting that ministry staff were working around the clock with TSTT to resolve the connectivity gap. The Children’s Authority of Trinidad and Tobago was forced to take its primary emergency hotlines — 996 and 800-2014 — offline, prompting the agency to issue urgent public guidance for alternative reporting channels, including a secondary phone line, dedicated email address, and web-based reporting portal.
Major private sector entities also faced disruptions: leading local bank First Citizens reported its main 62-FIRST customer contact centre was inaccessible, redirecting clients to a secondary contact number. Caribbean Airlines’ logistics arm Jetpak issued a public notice warning of intermittent connectivity outages across its national network, noting that while the company’s website and mobile application remained operational, customers may face brief service interruptions as connectivity stabilized. Payment processing at pickup locations and with delivery drivers was also temporarily affected, leading to minor delays for parcel transactions, the company confirmed.
By the end of the day yesterday, TSTT confirmed full service restoration for all affected customers and support channels in an official public statement. “We are pleased to advise that the services and customer support channels affected earlier yesterday have been restored,” the company said. “Given the extent of the damage to our fibre infrastructure, our teams continue to carry out repairs while closely monitoring service performance. We regret the inconvenience caused and thank our customers for their patience and understanding.”
This most recent outage comes less than two weeks after a similar nationwide disruption hit Digicel Trinidad and Tobago, the country’s other major telecommunications provider. On August 13, Digicel customers reported widespread outages affecting mobile voice, mobile data, ICT, and fibre services; the company confirmed full service restoration by 4 p.m. that same day.
When contacted for comment on yesterday’s TSTT outage, Joanne Ogeer, secretary general of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) which represents TSTT employees, declined to provide any statement on the incident.