BTC Bids to Seize Yacht Over $1.5m Cable Break
By Neil Hartnell, Tribune Business
May 9, 2024
The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) has launched legal action in New York to seize a high-end yacht it accuses of causing $1.5m in damage to its undersea cable network.
The carrier, in legal papers filed on Tuesday, is seeking a US federal court order for the arrest of the multi-million dollar M/V Retriever after its alleged attempts to anchor off Cable Beach on April 27, 2024, caused “extensive damage” to an 800-metre length of its Bahamas Domestic Submarine Network cable infrastructure.
Documents accompanying the lawsuit reveal that BTC had to re-route customer traffic of 20 Gbps (gigabytes per second) via the “very unstable” fibre optic connection between Ragged Island and Long Island, while other clients’ communications had to be directed via the separate ARCOS system. The damaged cable provided Internet and communications services between Nassau and Fresh Creek, Andros.
Describing itself as the “owner of Segment R1 of the Bahamas Domestic Submarine Network (BDSNi) submarine telecommunication cable system that connects The Bahamas with the rest in the world, carrying voice, data, video and Internet communications traffic”, BTC alleged: “On April 27, 2024, at approximately 4:27pm local time, the cable was damaged offshore of Cable Beach in Nassau, New Providence.
“BTC was immediately notified by the cable’s alarm logs. Through a review of publicly available Automatic Information System (AIS) data, BTC identified the vessel [M/V Retriever] as the only vessel in the direct vicinity of the cable at the approximate time and date that the damage occurred, with an AIS track indicating that the vessel appeared to be anchored, to have her anchor engaged in the cable, and to be trying to detangle her anchor from the cable.”
BTC produced an incident report to the southern New York federal court to support its case. “The below alarms indicate a fibre break event on the Bahamas Domestic Submarine Network subsea R1 segment (Fresh Creek to Nassau),” the report said.
