Seven-day eircom outage causes chaos for Westport businesses

Seven-day eircom outage causes chaos for Westport businesses


Áine Ryan

“THEY even have credit card machines that work on stalls in Morocco,” was the view of one discommoded American visitor to Westport during a protracted Eircom outage earlier this month.  
He wasn’t the only person put out by the seven-day outage from February 6 to 13, which left businesses along Bridge Street, Market Lane and parts of The Mall in Westport without telephone, broadband and credit-card-machine services.
“It would have been a disaster if it happened during the tourism season, as most tourists don’t carry cash,” one shopkeeper told The Mayo News yesterday. “It was Third World standards to be left without these services for an entire week. Fortunately, it was the quiet time of the year, but it was ridiculous that it was left for a full week, as it not only affected businesses but also doctors’ surgeries and elderly residents.”
He said he phoned the eircom 1891 number every day and each time got someone with no knowledge of the fault who offered to take his details.
The outage also proved to be ‘a big inconvenience’ for busy restaurateur, Frankie Mallon of An Port Mór.
“No one told us what was going on. We had to ask customers to go out on the street and get cash. If they didn’t want to do that, they had to trust us with their credit card numbers. It was a nightmare for us,” Mr Mallon said.
The inconvenience has prompted Clodagh McGovern who runs Eye World opticians on Market Lane, to consider getting ‘a mobile device rather than relying on fixed-line broadband for credit-card payments’.
“Whatever about being out for an hour, this was extremely frustrating and made the running of our business very difficult. We also do all our ordering online, which added to the difficulties,” Clodagh McGovern said yesterday.  
An eircom spokeswoman confirmed to The Mayo News yesterday that ‘the major outage happened during NRA (National Roads Authority) repairs at the South Mall-Bridge Street area.   
“Service has now been restored to these customers. Unfortunately, due to the extensive and complex damage caused to the eircom cables this took longer to repair than usual. eircom apologises for any inconvenience caused to business and residents affected,” she said in a statement.
President of Westport Chamber of Commerce Neill O’Neill added that few businesses can trade without broadband and internet, and to lose both at the same time is completely crippling for many.
“There has been ongoing dialogue with eircom about broadband in Westport, where it is available at varying speeds depending on which street in the town a business is based on, something that nobody finds acceptable in this day and age and many are frustrated by,” he said.
“To think that it takes a week to fix a line fault in an urban centre like Westport is frightening, as there are businesses that are completely dependent on this service to operate at all. We have to question whether there would be such a delay in finding a remedy for a similar problem in Galway or Dublin.”