The Chamber of Commerce and telecommunications representatives plan to meet this morning after telephone communications came to a near-standstill again Tuesday.
"All circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later," became the next voice you heard when trying to make a phone call Tuesday. And that included calls to 911 and the hospital.
The meeting scheduled Tuesday afternoon between the telecommunications companies and St. Thomas-St.John Chamber of Commerce members was postponed at the V.I. Telephone Corp.'s request.
Katrina White -Comissiong, public relations director for Vitelco, said Tuesday's problems started Monday because of a malfuntioning piece of equipment, according to various media reports.
"We had to take that malfunctioning piece of equipment totally out of service," she told WVWI. "However, taking that faulty piece of equipment out of service has totally diminished Vitelco's trunk capacity."
As a result, Comissiong said, Vitelco customers might experience traffic congestion from time to time. Comissiong said if you are experiencing delays, you need to hang up and try your call again later.
She said Vitelco is working on the problem and realizes it has been a problem for its customers.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Comissiong said service had been mostly restored on St. Thomas. She said on St. Croix service was being restored gradually
She said Vitelco would be conducting diagnostic tests to try to solve the problem. She could not commit to a specific time frame when the problems would be solved.
She said the 1210 switch, an old and finicky piece of equipment that has caused problems in the past, is not the problem this time.
When asked if there were any alternative ways to handle calls to the hospital or 911, Comissiong said she believed Vitelco was going to fix the problem and would not need a fallback position.
In one incident Tuesday a tourist whose knapsack was stolen at Magens Bay was forced to call WSTA because he could not reach the police.
Though Vitelco said its problems began Monday, merchants are irate that a lack of phone lines and interrupted phone service have created headaches — and lost business — repeatedly in the last two weeks.
Problems were especially bad last Wednesday during the height of the Christmas rush.
The lack of consistent phone service for three to four hours that day cost some retailers significant amounts of money in sales.
People trying to dial local calls also experienced difficulties, including a repeated message saying all circuits were busy — a situation repeated two weeks ago and again this week.
The Chamber of Commerce had asked for a meeting Tuesday with the territory's communications firms to determine the cause of ongoing interruptions in telephone service and how to solve the problem.
"We just want to get to the bottom of the problem," Thomas B. Brunt III, chamber president, said Monday. "We're hoping the technical people will be forthcoming with what the problems really are and then we can work on solutions."
AT&T and Sprint have confirmed that they will send representatives to the meeting, Brunt said. He said he could not reach V.I. Telephone Corp. officials Monday because it was a holiday, and had not heard back from Cellular One.
White-Comissiong, Vitelco's public relations director, said last week that she was unaware of any problems with local or long-distance calls on Wednesday.
Merchants across the island were painfully aware of them.
"Wednesday was my Christmas eve," said Janelle Zachman, owner of Going Seanile on the waterfront. "It was a nightmare. We were already extremely busy and then with no phone lines on top of it, people had to wait 15 or 20 minutes just to check out."
Zachman said some people didn't wait and she lost sales.
Zachman handled transactions manually and then put them through later that night.
"Thank goodness they all went through," she said.
Credit card verification lines are 800-numbers that are automatically dialed up when a credit card is run through the machine. When the phone lines are inoperable, there is no way to verify the credit card and make the transaction, said Stu Thompson, manager of Tommy Hilfiger on the waterfront.
"Everyone loses money — the sales associates, the store — because people don't want to wait, so they leave," he said.
The transaction should take a couple of seconds.
Thompson did not want to put a dollar amount on how much money was lost in sales Wednesday.
"Let's just say it was a significant amount," he said.
The problems were not limited to downtown. Phyllis George, owner of Phil's Paradise in Havensight, had the same difficulty with her phones.
"I couldn't get charges to go through," George said. "Fortunately, I didn't lose any money though," because tourists gave her travelers checks and she held the transactions for her regular customers until later that night when she was able to put them through.
Mulo Alwani, owner of Artistic Jewelers on Main Street, said he also didn't lose any sales. It took a long time, he said, but he got his transactions to go through.
But Alwani said that as of Friday, his store still was experiencing phone problems.
Shelly de Chabert, strategic planning and public affairs director for AT&T of the Virgin Islands, said Wednesday's phone problems had nothing to do with AT&T.
"AT&T does not switch 800 service. That is done by the local exchange carrier," she said.
Spokespeople from Sprint and TLD, who also provide 800 service to the territory, could not be reached for comment over the holiday weekend.
Joe Aubain, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, said the problems Wednesday were extremely disruptive, especially two days before Christmas.
Brunt agreed, noting reports from the states indicate that Internet commerce was expected to double this holiday season; it tripled. Reliability of communications is vital to that commerce, Brunt said.
"The rest of the world is going at the speed of light while we're just plodding along," he said.
Additionally, "We've got bogus credit cards circulating on the island and if merchants can't verify the transaction by telephone, they run a huge risk by accepting credit cards and running the transactions later. That is exactly what we are telling people not to do."
De Chabert said she would attend the planned meeting as AT&T's representative to address the chamber's concerns.
Brunt said the meeting will be closed to the press to allow people to talk candidly.
