By Charles Duncan, Cayman Compass
A lightning strike along one of the submarine cables that connects Cayman’s Internet to the rest of the world knocked out Internet service for many on Grand Cayman Tuesday evening.
The lightning hit a landing station at the U.S. end of the Maya-1 cable system between Cancun, Mexico and Hollywood, Florida, on Tuesday afternoon, affecting Internet access and some phone service in Cayman, according to local telecom companies and regulators.
The Cayman Information and Communications Technology Authority advised Tuesday evening that “a lightning strike at MAYA1 cable terminal in Florida today is linked to hardware failure which is affecting the ability of Cayman telecoms providers.”
The regulator said the island had a “major outage” and Digicel customers were not able to reach 911. Logic and FLOW customers could still reach 911 during the outage, but many residents could not reach the main numbers for the George Town police station. FLOW reported problems for mobile customers trying to call numbers in other networks.
By 9:50 p.m. Tuesday, ICTA said all issues with phone and Internet connections had been resolved.
