IBIS / Internet Systems Status

IBIS Internet Systems Status

This page displays the current status of IBIS internet systems, dial up lines and data links, with summary information on current faults and warnings of possible disruptions.

See Notices - below - for status messages

Status Indicators:

fully operational

minor problems / warnings

major problems

Current Status - Friday 25 July 2008

IBIS Internet Systems	fully operational

Incoming DialUp Lines	fully operational

Telecoms ADSL system	fully operational

Data Link: European Satellite	fully operational

Data Link: USA Satellite	fully operational

Data Link: RSA	fully operational

Data Link: Francistown	fully operational

Data Link: Maun	fully operational

Notices

Saturday 19th July 2008 20:15 BTC's ADSL network came back up at exactly 20:00.

Saturday 19th July 2008 19:55 Our WAN links to F'Town and Phikwe went down at 19:40. BTC have been informed. Saturday 19th July 2008 19:38 As far as we can ascertain, BTC's entire ADSL service is down countrywide. BTC does have internet connectivity and the Botswana DNS servers are reachable so the problem appears to be restricted to the ADSL network. BTC are still investigating.

Saturday 19th July 2008 18:00 BTC's ADSL service went down at 17:30 today. BTC have been informed.

Thursday 17th July 2008 11:33 There may be a short interruption to some of our services at 13:00 today due to system maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thursday 3rd July 2008 17:00 Most of our ADSL clients in phase 4 were reconnected by 16:20.

Thursday 3rd July 2008 16:05 There is still no forecast on when BTC's ADSL services in Phase 4 in G'West will be restored. BTC, however, confirm that they have a fibre cut and their technicians are working on the problem.

Thursday 3rd July 2008 13:45 BTC's ADSL network appears to be down throughout phase 4. BTC say they are working on the problem.

Friday 27th June 2008 14:14 I thought I had waited long enough to be sure that the power was stable... BPC power is off again but we do not expect any problems.

Friday 27th June 2008 14:11 BPC power was restored at exactly 14:00.

Friday 27th June 2008 13:50 We have been running on backup power since shortly after 12:00 due to a power cut affecting a large part of Gaborone West. All of our systems are working properly and we do not anticipate any interruption to services. As far as we are aware Botswana Telecoms services in this part of town are also unaffected.

Monday 23rd June 2008 12:00 Due to emergency system maintenance there may be a brief loss of connectivity to some of our customers at some time between 13:00 and 14:00 today. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Customers are welcome to call our helpdesk on 391-8444 if they would like to be notified of an "all-clear" when the maintenance is finished.

Tuesday 17th June 2008 19:10 There was an interruption to some of our mail services at 18:01. The problem was resolved and we apologize for the interruption to services.

Tuesday 17th June 2008 10:15 There is a problem affecting internet access via our Maun POP. Customers are advised to dial in through our Gaborone POP using 365-7600. Our help desk (391-8444) will be happy to notify you once the problem has been resolved.

Thursday 5th June 2008 08:00 BTC have had a transmission failure affecting lines going to he North of the country. Consequently our POPs in F'Town and Phikwe have been down. They believe the problem has now been fixed.

Wednesday 4th June 2008 08:10 A problem which was preventing certain customers from fully accessing our network has been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Monday 2nd June 2008 16:00 BTC's link bringing us ADSL traffic is now working correctly.

Monday 2nd June 2008 09:30 Once again we have a problem with the BTC link bringing us their ADSL traffic. Locally-hosted websites and our mail servers are difficult to reach. Affected customers are requested to contact our helpdesk on 391-8444 so that they can be notified once the problem is resolved.

Tuesday 27th May 2008 14:20 Our ADSL customers have been experiencing delays retrieving POP mail and accessing our hosted websites. The problem was caused by the 2Mbps BTC link bringing the ADSL traffic to us. The link appears to have been fixed and traffic is now flowing normally.

Wednesday 14th May 2008 11:30 Our WAN link to Francistown is down due to a power failure affecting the centre of town.

Saturday 3rd May 2008 11:20 The ADSL network is now working properly.

Saturday 3rd May 2008 08:30 BTC has a serious problem with their network and currently their ADSL network has no connection to the internet or to local ISPs.

Tuesday 29th April 2008 08:30 We are observing line instability problems with our WAN link to Maun. We are also observing line resets with ADSL customers in Maun. BTC confirm that they have a network problem in Maun and are investigating.

Monday 28th April 2008 08:20 The issue with instability of two of our BTC dialup E1 lines remains unresolved.

Friday 25th April 2008 08:25 Although we are now getting dialup traffic from BTC's MSU-1 exchange on one of our troubled E1 lines the traffic from their MSU-2 exchange is still subject to disruption. We urge our customers to use the alternate dialup numbers described below.

Thursday 24th April 2008 09:00 We continue to experience line instability with two of our E1 lines bringing dialup customer traffic from Info and Global customers. BTC are working on the problem. Global Internet Access customers can avoid the problem by using this number 365-6700 (please note this is not the same as one of our other dialin numbers 365-7600). Info Botswana customers should dial 316-6175.
Please call our help desk on 391-8444 if you need help reconfiguring your dialup.

Wednesday 23rd April 2008 13:30 One of our BTC E1 lines bringing dialup customer traffic from BTC's MSU-2 exchange (in G'West) is unstable causing customer calls to be dropped periodically. BTC has been informed. Affected customers are advised to do a "proxy logon" through our Gaborone GIA dialup server. Please call our helpdesk on 391-8444 for assistance.

Tuesday 22nd April 2008 07:50 Our WAN link to Phikwe is down due to a BTC transmission problem affecting some traffic to the North.

Wed 2nd April 2008 11:00 BTC have repaired the link bringing us ADSL traffic.

Wed 2nd April 2008 07:55 Once again ADSL customers are experiencing delays retrieving mail and browsing local sites due to a problem with the BTC link bringing us our ADSL traffic. We are notifying BTC.

Tuesday 25th March 2008 15:53 BTC have repaired the link brining our ADSL customers' traffic.

Tuesday 25th March 2008 15:35 The link that brings our ADSL traffic is completely down while BTC are investigating the problems with that link.

Tuesday 25th March 2008 11:00 There appears to still be a problems with the BTC link bringing ADSL traffic to us. We have reported it to BTC.

Tuesday 25th March 2008 10:25 BTC has resolved the power failure that was interrupting all traffic from ADSL customers to local ISPs.

Tuesday 25th March 2008 09:55 We have implemented a new IP address for ADSL customers to POP their info.bw mail pending BTC's resolution of the problem. Please contact our help desk on 391-8444 for assistance in configuring this in your email client.
ADDENDUM TO THIS NOTICE -------------
We will dynamically implement new IP addresses as and when required via DNS. Customers do not need to make any changes to their email clients.

Tuesday 25th March 2008 09:35 ADSL customers are experiencing problems retrieving their mail and browsing locally-hosted websites. The problem seems due to instability on a BTC link bringing us ADSL traffic. We are currently unable to get through to phones in BTC so their problem might be power related.

Tuesday 18th March 2008 11:03 We have been running on backup power since 08:30 this morning due to BPC load shedding. All our systems are functional and all of our BTC services remin unaffected.

Monday 17th March 2008 11:15 Our WAN link to Phikwe is down due to a transmission failure between F'Town and Phikwe.

Tuesday 4th March 2008 16:50 The problem with accessing domains hosted by Internet Solutions in RSA has been resolved. We are now removing the "workarounds" that we installed to maintain email and web connectivity to those domains.

Friday 29th February 2008 00:30 We have an unconfirmed report of a problem with BTC's ADSL service affecting customers connecting to the MSU-1 (Megaleng) exchange. As a precaution customers should not turn off or disconnect their ADSL modems unnecessarily. Customers experiencing problems should contact our helpdesk on 391-8444 or by email to support@info.bw

Thursday 28th February 2008 07:25 We apologize for a problem that was preventing some of our customers from accessing our mail servers. The problem has now been fixed.

Wednesday 27th February 2008 14:40 We have become aware of an apparent routing problem within Internet Solutions in RSA. We are unable to reach a number of IS hosted mail sites and their customers are unable to reach our servers. We are trying to contact their network staff to get them to resolve the problem.

Monday 18th February 2008 16:10 BTC's ADSL service to the majority of our customers is down. BTC acknowledge the problem and are investigating.

Tuesday 5th February 2008 23:55 We have been running on emergency power since 19:20 today. BPC cannot advise when power will be restored. All of our systems are working but many of our customers links are down.

Thursday 31st January 2008 17:10 Due to BPC load shedding we have been running on backup power since before 09:00 today until 16:50. All services, however, have been working normally.

Wednesday 23rd January 2008 13:50 We apologize for the recent interruption to services. BPC's unannounced load shedding coincided with work on our backup power system.

Friday 18th January 2008 13:30 Our WAN link to Maun is down due to a power cut affecting a large part of Maun.

Thursday 17th January 2008 08:10 We received the BTC leased-line modem at our Maun office late on Wednesday. We hope to have the line restored this morning.

Wednesday 16th January 2008 11:30 BTC have promised to have a replacement modem for our Maun WAN link by 12:00.

Tuesday 15th January 2008 17:00 BTC are still trying to source a leased-line modem to restore our WAN link to Maun.

Tuesday 145h January 2008 12:30 Our WAN link to Maun remains down. BTC have arrived on site and agreed that they need to replace the leased-line modem.

Monday 14th January 2008 13:50 Our WAN link to Maun remains down. We are awaiting a replacement leased-line modem from BTC.

Monday 14th January 2008 08:15 Our WAN link to Maun is down following a power cut there. Please notify our help desk on 391-8444 if you would like to be notified once service has been restored.

Friday 11th January 2008 12:05 There will be a brief interruption to our services during the period 13:30 to 14:00 to allow for some urgent maintenance work. We apologize for this and promise to keep the outage as short as possible.

Friday 11th January 2008 09:25 Our WAN link to Maun is down due to a power failure affecting a large part of Maun.

Wednesday 9th January 2008 11:40 A problem on our network which was preventing ADSL customers from reaching local domains has been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank our customers for bringing the problem to our attention.

Monday 17th December 2007 17:35 The problem affecting some ADSL logins seems to have lasted from about 15:52 to 17:15. BTC were unaware of the cause of the problem.

Monday 17th December 2007 16:15 We have had a series of reports from ADSL customers who are unable to access the internet. In all cases only the "internet" light on their ADSL modem is red. We suspect that there may be a problem with the authentication servers at BTC and we are currently trying to contact the appropriate staff there.

Friday 7th December 18:05 BTC has experienced a transmission failure going towards Maun. Our WAN link to Maun is down as are customer links and ADSL. BTC hope to have the link repaired before the end of the day.

Wednesday 5th December 2007 15:45 BTC are not yet routing our ADSL customers' traffic to us over our local link. This is causing delays accessing locally hosted services. In particular we note that locally-hosted websites such as our website http://www.info.bw are unreachable from our ADSL customers as the traffic stops at BTC's transparent proxy. Other ISPs' ADSL customers are unaffected.

Wednesday 5th December 2007 13:25 Our link to BTC and their ADSL and internet connectivity all seem to be working now.

Wednesday 5th December 2007 10:13 BTC say they hope to have their systems back up in one hour. Customers are welcome to leave a message with our help desk (391-8444) if they would like to be informed when the BTC service is restored. ADSL customers may dial in to us to receive their mail.

Wednesday 5th December 2007 10:00 BTC's ADSL and internet connectivity is down. We have no further details but BTC assures us they are working on the problem.

Thursday 29th October 2007 16:55 BTC has suffered another transmission failure between Gaborone and Palapye. ADSL and leased line services to Maun are down. Our WAN link to our Maun POP is also affected.

Thursday 29th October 2007 08:55 BTC confirm that their ADSL service in the North of the country still has severe problems.

Wednesday 28th October 2007 17:10 The ADSL service in the North of the country is down due to a BTC fibre cut near Palapye.

Wednesday 28th November 2007 14:10 Internet access outside of Botswana is back to normal.

Wednesday 28th November 2007 09:55 Internet access outside of Botswana is slow due to a fire in Oslo which has destroyed much fibre capacity to our satellite provider. As yet there is no estimate of when full service will be restored. Customers may wish to use our proxy server for increased speed.
Perhaps now is also a good time to discover the benefits of the Botswana Internet Exchange (BINX). Websites locally-hosted by BINX members including the Government of Botswana may be accessed very quickly.

Sunday 18th November 2007 10:55 BTC caution that their internet link might be unstable. We have left our proxy server access open to our ADSL customers until such time as we are happy that the ADSL service is stable.

Sunday 18th November 2007 10:40 BTC's internet access has been restored and their ADSL system is working as normal.

Sunday 18th November 2007 10:05 We have enabled a temporary resource for ADSL customers to access the internet while the BTC service is down. Please configure your browser to use our proxy server (proxy.info.bw port 8080). We have posted instructions here.

Sunday 18th November 2007 10:00 BTC confirm that their internet link remains down. The problem is a major power failure in the UK affecting British Telecom.
ADSL customers will be able to access some locally-hosted internet services, however many such services, such as websites, DNS and email servers will become unavailable from outside of Botswana. Some time back we wrote this description of the implications of BTC DNS failure

Sunday 18th November 2007 09:20 BTC's internet access went down a few minutes ago. ADSL customers will be unable to access the internet and there will be implications for the Botswana DNS if the outage is sustained. We have notified BTC.

Friday 16th November 2007 13:30 Our WAN links to Phikwe and Francistown are down due to a power failure affecting part of Francistown.

Friday 16th November 2007 10:35 All of our systems are working properly. Customers who made temporary changes on advice from our helpdesk are advised to reverse such changes. They are invited to call our helpdesk on 391-8444 if they need help in doing this.

Friday 16th November 2007 09:30 Our mail systems are working fine. The issue with global users logon will be solved shortly.

Friday 16th November 2007 07:40 We have a system problem affecting our global users logging in and affecting some users sending mail. Users are invited to call our help desk who can offer advice and will notify them once service has been fully restored. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Thursday 15th November 2007 07:55 A power problem is affecting the area in Phikwe where our offices are located. Dialup and leased line customers there are affected but not ADSL customers. We hope that service will be restord in about one hour.

Friday 2nd November 2007 17:30 BTC's Phikwe link was restored at 17:20.

Friday 2nd November 2007 16:45 BTC have lost their link to Phikwe. Our dialup customers and leased line customers there will be unable to access the internet or our servers. ADSL customers there are also affected.

Thursday 1st November 2007 17:01 BTC's international link has been restored. ADSL traffic is now flowing as usual.

Thursday 1st November 2007 16:50 A few minutes ago BTC lost their internet connectivity through their UK link. At present there is no international connectivity to BTC as BTC is not currently routing traffic over any other links. Our ADSL customers will be unable to browse any websites other than our own.
If connectivity to BTC is lost for an extended period then there will be negative implications for the Botswana DNS and local domains may become unreachable from outside Botswana.

Wednesday 10th October 2007 11:17 BTC's internet department have already resolved their DNS problem which was apparently due to an issue with their UK connection.

Wednesday 10th October 2007 11:14 A few minutes ago we lost touch with all of BTC's name servers. Initial tests show that BTC's ADSL system iteself is OK but ADSL users will be unable to browse or resolve names to IP addresses using BTC's DNS. WE advise our customers to use our DNS 193.220.192.1 and 193.220.192.2 if they are able to do so until the problem is resolved.

Tuesday 9th October 2007 18:27 At 17:00 BTC resolved the BGP problem that had brought down their network and their ADSL service.

Tuesday 9th October 2007 16:43 BTC's ADSL service went down at about 16:25. BTC report that the system is down country-wide and that their technicians are working on it.

Saturday 22nd September 2007 01:45 BTC completed repairs to their Maun link a short while ago.

Friday 21st September 2007 22:50 Our satellite feed was restored a short while ago, later than had been forecast. Outgoing mail will start to move shortly. We apologize for the delay in getting service restored.

Friday 21st September 2007 21:37 Our bandwidth provider has isolated the equipment failure at their teleport that has brought down our satellite feed. They hope to have replacement equipment installed within 30 minutes. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Friday 21st September 2007 20:01 Our link to Maun remains down. BTC now admit that other customers are experiencing problems and the ADSL link to Maun is down.

Friday 21st September 2007 19:15 Our bandwidth provider is still investigating the problem with our satellite link. In the meantime customers can use our proxy server to access the internet.

Friday 21st September 2007 18:50 Our satellite link went down a few minutes ago. We are contacting our bandwidth provider to ascertain the cause.

Friday 21st September 2007 14:45 BTC report that their link to Maun will be down for at least another 2 hours. Customers who wish to be notified once the link has been restored should leave their contact details with our help desk on 391-8444

Friday 21st September 2007 10:30 Our WAN link to Maun is down due to a fibre cut between Francistown and Maun. As yet there is no indication when the link will be restored.

Monday September 17th 2007 15:02 Our satellite link has just been restored.

Monday September 17th 2007 13:40 Our bandwidth provider is again experiencing interference
with their satellite. If the duration of the outage is extended then please use our proxy server
to access the internet. We apologize for this interruption to service.

Monday September 17th 2007 10:30 Our satellite provider has resolved their technical
problem and internet bandwidth has been restored.

Monday September 17th 2007 10:08 Our bandwidth provider is having a problem with
their satellite connectivity. They are invetigating to ascertain the cause of the
problem. Customers may wish to leave their details with our helpdesk so that we can
notify them when service is restored.

Customers may use our proxy server to browse the web but incoming mail will be delayed.

Tuesday 31st July 2007 18:20 BTC have identified and resolved the routing problem
that was preventing their network from talking to ours. Customers of other ISPs
using BTC's network, mainly those using ADSL, can now reach us. Our customers
can now resolve non-local Botswana domain names.

Tuesday 31st July 2007 17:10 We are still unable to reach BTC's name servers and
it appears that ADSL customers of other ISPs cannot reach our network through BTC's
internet feed. We are liasing with BTC to try to resolve the problem.

Tuesday 31st July 2007 10:33 BTC's name servers appear to be unreachable. It
appears that their link to British Telecom is down. We have notified BTC. ADSL
customers may experience slow speeds.

Monday 30th July 2007 15:57 We have lost our WAN links to Francistown and Phikwe
due to a BTC fibre cut near Serule. Voice traffic to those towns is, however,
unaffected.

Friday 27th July 2007 17:20 BTC's RSA links were restored at 17:10. Both their
ADSL service and their international private leased circuits seem to be back to normal.

Friday 27th July 2007 14:50 The problem with RSA data links is also affecting
BTC's ADSL service. Currently ADSL is slow and RSA sites are unreachable.
Customers with alternate wireless or leased line links to us should use those
to access RSA. Mail to and from ADSL customers is unaffected.

Friday 27th July 2007 14:05 A fire in RSA has damaged numerous international
voice and data connnection from Botswana. Clients affected should call our help
desk on 391-8444 for advice.

Thursday 5th July 2007 15:00 It appears that BTC is resetting some of our E1
lines which bring dilup users to us. About 40 users have been cut off so far.

Monday 11th June 2007 15:30 BTC's ADSL system was restored at circa 13:00 today.

Friday 8th June 2007 14:40 BTC have serious problems with their international
internet links. In particular ADSL is extremely slow especially when browsing
sites in the UK and Europe.

Friday 8th June 2007 14:35 BTC have resolved the problem with their Maun exchange.

Friday 8th June 2007 13:25 Customers calling our Maun POP are hearing a rapid
engaged tone indicating "exchange busy" even though we have many lines free. BTC
have been informed.

Thursday 7th June 2007 12:15 Most of our WAN links and customer circuits have
been restored, however afew customer links remin down and our wide area network (WAN)
link to Maun is still down.

Thursday 7th June 2007 11:59 Many of our customer links and our WAN links have
now gone down. It appears that BTC is experiencing some serious power problems. This
will affect many many services. We ahve just confirmed that BTC's name servers, which
are responsible for the .BW domain, are also down. Some time ago we wrote this page
describing some of the implications of DNS failure at BTC.

Thursday 7th June 2007 11:55 The link that brings our customers' ADSL traffic
back from BTC to ourselves is down. International browsing for our ADSL customers
will be unaffected but locally hosted websites and our mail servers will be
unavailable to our ADSL customers. We have reported the link to BTC.

Tuesday 29th May 2007 11:10 We have two dead lines on our swtchboard. The PABX normally answers after one ring to allow callers to dial the
extension they require. Until such time as BTC repairs these lines we would
ask our customers to please hang-up and redial if their call is not answered
within two rings.

Tuesday 22nd May 2007 07:55 BTC fixed their ADSL system at 21:30 last night.

Monday 21st May 15:45 2007 BTC's ADSL network is currently completely down country-
wide as far as we can tell. BTC, however, say that it will be up shortly.

Monday 21st May 12:30 2007 BTC's ADSL network continues to be unstable. BTC report
that they are working to correct the problem.

Monday 21st May 09:45 2007 BTC report that their ADSL service is working normally
again although it is not clear what their problem had been.

Monday 21st May 07:55 2007 BTC's ADSL network appears to be unstable. We have
notified BTC. They were unaware of the problem but have promised to investigate.

Friday 18th May 18:11 2007 Our internet feed has been restored. The problem was
caused by another ISP in Botswana with misconfigured equipment.

Friday 18th May 17:20 2007 Our satellite link is down. Our satellite provider is
investigating.

Wednesday 16th May 2007 17:00 BTC have an exchange problem in Tlokweng. This
will affect ADSL customers in that area.

Wednesday 9th May 2007 15:35 BTC finally restored our E1 link from MSU1 a
few minutes ago - over 25 hours since it was reported to them. Customers in
the catchment area of that exchange may revert to using the original dial-in
number or continue with the alternative 316-6175.

Tuesday 8th May 2007 15:00 BTC have still not restored our E1 link from
MSU1. Customers who cannot dial in on 365-7600 are requested to use 316-6175
If you would like help in changing the dial-in number then please call our
help desk on 391-8444.

Tuesday 8th May 2007 13:50 Customers dialing into us from the area
server by BTC's MSU1 exchange (including the main Mall) are getting
a busy tone even though we have many lines free. BTC has been notified.

Monday 30th April 2007 08:14 Our satellite link has been restored.

Monday 30th April 2007 07:55 Our satellite link is down again. Our satellite
provider is investigating.

Sunday 29th April 2007 19:05 Our satellite link was restored at 18:50

Sunday 29th April 2007 17:30 Our satellite link is down again. Our satellite
provider blames interference from a terrestrial source and is trying to
identify its location.

Saturday 28th April 2007 10:00 BTC have repaired their fibre-cut. ADSL and leased-line
services are back to normal.

Saturday 28th April 2007 08:51 Botswana Telecoms has suffered a fibre-cut which is
affecting adsl customers and leased line customers. Our ADSL customers are unable to
access our mail servers and web-sites directly however they can access those services
by dialup or via other ISP's ADSL connections! Customers are encouraged to call our
help desk on 391-8444 for assistance with dialing in to collect their mail or if they
would like to be notified once BTC has restored their services.

Friday 27th April 2007 08:10 Our Satellite feed is back up.

Friday 27th April 2007 07:45 Our Satellite internet link is down. We are contacting
our satellite provider

Thursday 26th April 2007 15:30 Following complaints frome ADSL customers in Maun
we have ascertained that they have transmission problems in Maun. These may affect
ADSL and dialup customers there.

Tues 25th April 2007 08:10 Some customers may have had difficulty browsing the
the internet or collecting their mail overnight. The problem has now been resolved.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

Wed 18th April 2007 11:55 We have received notice from our satellite provider of
interference caused by signals directed against the satellite we are using. This
may cause delays in accessing the internet. We apologise for this.

Tues 17th April 2007 08:00 BTC's ADSL service is back up again. Their DNS servers, which
serve the .BW domain and which had also gone down, are now back up.

Tues 17th April 2007 07:50 BTC's ADSL service is completely down. They are working
to try to restore services. Our ADSL customers can still dial in to us to pick up their
mail. If you would like to be notified once service is restored then please contact our
support desk on 391-8444.

Thursday 29th March 2007 16:24 Internet connectivity will be down for a few minutes at
this time for the next few days owing to solar alignment with the satellite providing
our connectivity. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Friday 23rd March 2007 14:30 BTC have warned of an interruption to ADSL service from
18:00 to 20:00 on Sun 25th March for customers served by their MSU1 exchange (situated
at Megaleng).

Wednesday 21st March 2007 07:40 BTC have suffered a transmission failure to Maun. Our
WAN link to Maun is down although ADSL traffic there is no worse than normal.

Friday 16th March 2007 15:50 The problem with BTC's ADSL appears to have been resolved.
We remind our customers that they should report any problems with ADSL to our help desk
on 391-8444 so that we can investigate and escalate to BTC when appropriate.

Friday 16th March 2007 15:20 We have received isolated reports of problems with BTC's
ADSL service in Gaborone West. BTC have confirmed the possibility of a problem at their
MSU2 exchange. We advise ADSL customers to avoid disconnecting their ADSL connection in
case they are unable to reconnect.

Wednesday 14th March 2007 21:45 There is a power failure affecting a large part of
Gaborone West. Our servers are running on backup power but our services to our customers
are unaffected. Our dialin lines may be affected if BTC's subexchanges lose power.
Botswana Power Corporation do not yet know the cause of the failure although a powerful
electrical storm passed through a short while ago.

Tuesday 13th March 2007 12:29 BTC is experiencing some tranmission problems on their
link to Francistown. At present our Francistown customers and our Phikwe POP are
unaffected but some of our leased line customers in Phikwe are affected.

Tuesday 28th February 2007 08:05 BTC has suffered a transmission failure to Maun. Both
ADSL and voice lines seem to be down. Our data link, however, is unaffacted so Maun customers
can still browse the web, send emails etc.

Monday 26th February 2007 17:10 Our WAN link to Maun is going up and down. BTC blame
instability in their link between Francistown and Maun. They claim it will not affect
Maun ADSL users.

Tuesday 13th February 2007 09:45 ADSL services to customers in Mogoditshane have been
interrupted by a BTC fibre cut. BTC are workijng to restore the link.

Monday 12th February 2007 12:00 BTC have restored our lines.

Monday 12th February 2007 11:20 Two of our digital E1 lines comprising 60 lines and
one of our ISDN lines comprising 30 lines have just gone down. We have notified BTC
Info Botswana customers dialing 365-7600 will be unaffected as the traffic is overflowing to other
E1 lines however our Global Internet Access (GIA) customers dialing 365-6400 and our ISDN
customers are unable to dial-in.

GIA customers can call our help desk on 391-8444 for instructions on making a "proxy login"
via our Info Botswana number. ISDN customers can also call our help desk for information on alternative
connection procedures.

Sunday 11th February 2007 15:45 BTC suffered a major fibre cut between
Orange and their MSU2 exchange at 11:40. Most of our customer leased lines were
affected together with our WAN link to Maun and our links to BTC's ADSL network.BTC has just finished restoring connectivity.

Wednesday 31st January 2007 11:50 Our WAN links to Phikwe are down due to a BTC
transmission failure. BTC is attempting to rectify the fault.

Saturday 27th January 2007 10:55 BTC's ADSL service in Maun is down. The problem seems
now to extend to voice lines to Maun also as we are currently unable to contact our
customers there. BTC confirms the problem with ADSL and says a technician is working
on it.

Thursday 25th January 2007 17:49 BTC have finished their repairs to the ADSL system. Our preliminary
tests indicate that they have been successful and mail is now flowing normally.

Thursday 25th January 2007 14:28 BTC hope to rectify the problem with ADSL that is causing problems

with some mail traffic later today. They will be bringing the ADSL system down for a couple of
minutes at about 18:00.

Wednesday 24th January 2007 18:09 We have identified that a major problem affecting ADSL customers
trying to send large mails is due to a problem with BTC's processing of ADSL traffic. We have
confirmed this with other ISPs and we have notified BTC.

Wednesday 24th January 2007 17:42 We note that the DNS for the botsnet.bw domain failed completely
for the period 10:38 until 13:04 today. Their DNS had been broken for a period of days but the
records finally expired this morning. They have since repaired their DNS but email sent during the
stated period will have been returned and so should be re-sent.

Thursday 18th January 2007 15:02 Large areas of South Africa are suffering power cuts. As a
consequence more and more RSA sites, especially many which are hosted in Joburg, are becoming

unreachable.

Tuesday 16th January 2007 14:00 We have received a notification from our satellite provider
about difficulties accessing some sites in USA. They blame problems within the internet backbone in
Europe (our internet feed lands in Europe and travels to USA by undersea cable). They say the
problem should be resolved "in a couple of days". They also warn of continuing problems accessing
sites in Asia due to the earthquake which disrupted communications in Taiwan two weeeks ago.

Tuesday 16th January 2007 07:55 Although power was restored to Maun our link has been down
overnight due to a BTC problem. We understand that their network in maun has serious problems.
We are attempting to escalate the problem with BTC management.

Monday 15th January 2007 17:30 Our Maun line is down due to a sustained power cut in Maun.
Monday 15th January 2007 09:18 The power to our Maun office has been down for some time (this
is unconnected with the BTC line problem there). Our UPS is holding up and BPC say they will
soon have power restored.

Monday 15th January 2007 07:55 Our link to Maun is going up and down. BTC say their network
in Maun is unstable and are investigating.

Friday 12th January 2007 08:22 BTC's ns1.btc.bw nameserver is now working properly.

Thursday 11th January 2007 17:45 We see that one of BTC's name servers - ns1.btc.bw
[168.167.168.34] has been down for the last two and a half hours. (The server itself is
up but the DNS service is down.) This shouldn't affect our ADSL customers unless they
have manually configured a single DNS server. In such cases please add a second DNS
server eg 168.167.253.21

Friday 22nd December 2006 15:20 Our links to Francistown and Phikwe are down due to a power cut in Francistown.

Friday 22nd December 2006 13:10 Our Maun link was restored just before 13:00.

Friday 22nd December 2006 11:55 Our WAN link to Maun went down shortly after 10:00 this morning. BTC say they have a transmission failure but don't have a time by which it will be fixed.

Thursday 21st December 2006 14:12 We were premature in announcing the complete repair of BTC's fibre cut. Their link to Maun has gone down again. BTC hope to have the link fully operational in about 20 mins.

Thursday 21st December 2006 13:45 BTC's links to Maun and Phikwe were restored about 10 minutes ago. We are now able to reach our ADSL customers in Maun.

Thursday 21st December 2006 09:32 There is a BTC cable cut near Palapye. Our WAN links to Phikwe and Maun are currently affected and BTC's ADSL service to Maun is down.

Thursday 21st December 2006 09:10 BTC has re-routed the Maun ADSL traffic and the service should be working properly later today. It is unclear if our Maun leased-line traffic will always share the fate of the ADSL traffic although it appears it will often follow the same route.

Thursday 21st December 2006 08:10 BTC has acknowledged that there is an ongoing problem with ADSL services to Maun. They blame the Orapa-Maun radio link which currently carries the Maun ADSL traffic. The link is scheduled for replacement before April 2007. As far as we are aware this link also carries our Maun leased-line traffic and is responsible for the poor performance of that service.

Monday 18th December 2006 17:15 The ADSL service in Maun went down at approx 16:45. We are notifying BTC.

Monday 18th December 2006 10:55 Our links to Francistown and Phikwe are down due to a power failure in central Francistowen.

Friday 15th December 2006 17:05 Although BTC earlier told us that the Phakalane fibre was repaired it turns out that BTC are still working on it and some customers have only just been reconnected.

Friday 15th December 2006 14:40 The Phakalane fibre-cut was repaired just after lunch.

Friday 15th December 2006 08:50 It appears that the current ADSL failure in Phakalane is due to a BTC fibre-cut. The link went down in the early hours of the morning.

Thursday 14th December 2006 09:10 BTC's link to Francistown came back at about 08:05. The link to Maun remains down apparently due to a widespread power cut in Maun.

Thursday 14th December 2006 07:55 BTC's link to Francistown went down at 22:30 last night. Their link to Maun went down at 06:00 this morning.

Tuesday 12th December 2006 15:10 BTC's link to Maun was unstable from 7th Dec until yesterday 11th Dec. We haven't had an official explanation from BTC but their services to Maun seem to be fine today.

Thursday 7th December 2006 16:00 BTC's link to Maun appears to have become unstable again. BTC acknowledged a problem a short while ago but were under the impression it had been resolved. As far as we can tell there is still a major problem and the link is currently down. BTC ADSL circuits to Maun appear to be affected as well as other data links. We jave notified BTC.

Wednesday 6th December 2006 13:07 The overloading of our DNS servers also caused a problem preventing some users logging in. The problem has been resolved and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Wednesday 6th December 2006 12:20 We apologize for a brief loss in service that appears to have been caused by unprecedented traffic directed at our nameservers. We are investigating to try to avoid a repetition.

Tuesday 4th December 2006 20:15 Our Maun link came back up at 21:07 however exactly an hour later it went down again. BTC confirm that the Ghanzi-Maun link appears unstable. Currently the line is up.

Tuesday 4th December 2006 14:08 Our WAN link to Maun is down. BTC confirm that there is a general problem affecting Maun but have no further information at present.

Tuesday 4th December 2006 12:20 BTC restored their link to Francistown at 12:15

Tuesday 4th December 2006 11:30 BTC now say that their fibre cut will have been repaired by 15:00 today.

Tuesday 4th December 2006 07:55 Our data links to Francistown and Phikwe are down due to a serious fibre cut in Francistown. Voice, data, cellular and ADSL traffic to Francistown and various other destinations is affected. Some voice and cellular traffic is being carried by alternative routes but congestion is likely. BTC are working on the cable and hope to have it repaired by 10:00am.

Monday 4th December 2006 13:57 BTC's ADSL service in the North of the country was restored at about 12:47. Their links to Francistown and Phikwe also came back up before 13:00 as promised.

Monday 4th December 2006 12:35 Our WAN links to Francistown and Phikwe are down. BTC confirm that they have a major problem. They hope to have the links back up by 13:00 today.

Monday 4th December 2006 09:10 BTC confirms that they have a problem with the ADSL service in Maun, Francistown and Phikwe. ADSL customers are free to call our national helpdesk on 391-8444 if they would like to be notified once BTC has restored service.

Monday 4th December 2006 08:40 The ADSL service in Maun seems to be down. We are trying to contact BTC.

Tuesday 28th November 2006 17:22 BTC confirm the problem with our Maun line and are investigating.

Tuesday 28th November 2006 17:05 Our links to F'Town and Phikwe have been restored but maun still remains down.

Tuesday 28th November 2006 16:25 BTC have suffered a transmission failure near Palapye. Our links to Francistown, Phikwe and Maun are therefore down.

Monday 27th November 2006 19:25 The last of our WAN links (Maun) was restored at 19:11. All BTC systems including ADSL seem to be working now so we are returning our status page to green.

Monday 27th November 2006 19:00 BTC's nameservers came back up at 18:45.

Monday 27th November 2006 18:10 BTC has now lost connectivity to Francistown, Maun and Phikwe as far as we can tell.

Monday 27th November 2006 17:40 We note that BTC's nameservers have also disappeared from the internet. This indicates a larger problem affecting not just their ADSL network but their internet access also. There are currently no Botswana nameservers available with records for all Botswana domains. This means that it is impossible to reach most Botswana domains.
We have placed a note explaining the impact and nature of the failure of BTC's DNS here

Monday 27th November 2006 17:30 BTC's ADSL network appears to be down. We are trying to contact the appropriate staff in BTC.

Monday 27th November 2006 12:05 Our WAN links to Maun, Francistown and Phikwe are down. BTC say they have experienced a transmission failure between Gaborone and Palapye. Customers, if they wish, can call our helpdesk on 391-8444 if they would like to be notified once service has been restored.

Friday 24th November 2006 17:25 Our WAN link to Maun is down. BTC say they have a transmission failure in Maun and are working to restore service.

Wednesday 22nd November 2006 15:15 Our WAN links to Francistown and Phikwe are down due to a power failure in Francistown. Customers are welcome to call our helpdesk on 391-8444 if they would like to be notified once power has been restored.

Monday 20th November 2006 10:30 Customers are having problems connecting to our POP in Francistown. We are investigating the problem. On the meantime customers may leave their details with our helpdesk on 391-8444 or our Francistown office on 241-8686 and we will contact you once the situatin has been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Tuesday 14th November 2006 14:40 Our WAN link to Maun has been restored.

Tuesday 14th November 2006 14:30 Our WAN link to Maun is down due to a power failure there.

Tuesday 7th November 2006 08:30 Early this morning BTC restored international ADSL connectivity which was lost yesterday due to a fibre cut in RSA.

Monday 6th November 2006 14:40 BTC have resolved the problem with the frame-relay link for our ADSL traffic.

Monday 6th November 2006 09:30 We have noticed that the link to our network from our ADSL customers has become slow due to a problem with the BTC frame-relay link. We have notified BTC.

Friday 3rd November 2006 10:50 Our WAN links to Francistown, Maun and Phikwe are down. BTC say they are having trouble with their links to the North of the country and are investigating.

Wednesday 1st November 2006 07:55 Our WAN link to Maun has been unstable thoughout the night. We are trying to report it to BTC.

Saturday 14th October 2006 12:50 Although our satellite link has been restored it remains unstable.

Saturday 14th October 2006 08:55 Our satellite provider has a major systems failure. They estimate that it may take 3 to 4 hours to repair. Internet browsing will be down until they finish their repairs. Browsing of local mail sites and websites hosted by members of the Botswana Internet Exchange (including gov.bw) will be unaffected. Customers may call our help desk on 391-8444 if they would like to be notified once service has been restored. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Thursday 12th October 2006 18:20 We have just received an email from BTC notifying us of an emergency shutdown of the ADSL network scheduled for 1800-1900 today. We apologize for the short notice but their email was only sent at 17:26 today and there was no phone call.

Thursday 5th October 2006 18:00 We understand from BTC that they have resolved their problem with ADSL authentication.

Thursday 5th October 2006 17:05 Following problems we have noticed with a number of our customers' ADSL links BTC have advised us that they have a problem with the ADSL country-wide. We advise our customers not to turn off their ADSL modems as they may not be able to re-connect.

Tuesday 3rd October 16:25 An equipment failure at our satellite provider led to a brief interruption to internet traffic. They assure us that the problem has now been resolved.

Thursday 28th September 10:15 BTC have restored the link bringing our customers' ADSL traffic.

Wednesday 27th September 09:45 The BTC link that brings our customers' ADSL traffic to our websites and mailservers is down. Our customers will not be able to send or receive mail from our servers or browse locally hosted website. We have notified BTC.

Thursday 21st September 07:10 It appears that the entire ADSL system went down at 1:30 this morning. We have notified BTC.

Wednesday 13th September 09:50 BTC have fixed their routing tables and local ADSL traffic should route correctly now.

Wednesday 13th September 09:30 We have confirmed with other ISPs that they have the same problem with BTC's routing of ADSL traffic and we have advised BTC accordingly.

Wednesday 13th September 08:20 We have noticed that BTC is routing our ADSL customers' traffic out to the ineternet instead of directly to ourselves. As a consequence mail and local website traffic will be delayed. We have notified BTC.

Monday 4th September 15:45 BTC have repaired their ADSL system. As far as we can tell it is now functioning normally.

Monday 4th September 15:30 BTC's ADSL system remains down. They confirm that they have a hardware problem but have no estimate of when a fix will be available. We invite our post office customers to contact our help desk on 391-8444 if they would like advice on alternative ways to retrieve their mail.

Monday 4th September 14:00 BTC's ADSL system is down. We have notified BTC.

Thursday 31st August 13:30 Woops I spoke too soon. There are still errors on the link that brings our customers' ADSL traffic to us. We have reported this to BTC who have confirmed the problem.

Thursday 31st August 08:10 Our link to BTC has been restored. The ADSL service is back to normal.

Thursday 31st August 07:50 The link that brings our ADSL customers' traffic to us is down. Yet again our customers will be unable to access our web sites and mail servers. We have notified BTC

Saturday 26th August 15:45 Our ADSL customers are unable to connect to the internet via BTC although they can connect to web sites we are hosting and to our mail servers. We have notified BTC.

Wednesday 16th August 09:30 BTC have confirmed they have experienced a major failure affecting numerous leased line customers.

Wednesday 16th August 09:20 We have just lost leased-line connectivity to many of our customers. We are asking BTC to investigate.

Tuesday 15th August 16:30 Our Maun link seems to have been stable since approx 12:30.

Tuesday 15th August 11:40 Our link to Maun is still unstable i.e. mostly down. Now that it's no longer getting dark BTC say that they have a more general problem affecting multiple customers and they are trying to re-route their traffic.

Monday 14th August 17:00 Our WAN link to Maun is again unstable. BTC say they can't investigate it as it's getting dark!

Wednesday 9th August 12:30 Once again users of our BTC ADSL service are unable to access our mail or web servers although other ISP's ADSL users will have no problem. We have notified BTC of the cause of the problem.

Wednesday 9th August 08:55 BTC have lost connectivity to the North of the country. Our links to our POPs in Francistown, Phikwe and Maun are therefore down. There is no information, as yet, as to when the links will be repaired.

Friday 4th August 07:55 Our WAN link to Phikwe is down. BTC are sending a technician to address the fault.

Wednesday 2nd August 22:00 BTC have restored the ADSL link to our servers for our ADSL customers.

Wednesday 2nd August 16:50 BTC are working to fix the problem affecting our ADSL customers. Unfortunately their link to us has gone down completely now.

Wednesday 2nd August 15:35 There was a very brief interruption to our internet feed which our satellite provider blames on atmospheric conditions at their earth station. Our feed seems to have been restored now.

Wednesday 2nd August 13:45 We are still experiencing problems with the link for our ADSL customers to our network. We are working with BTC to try to identify the source of problem.

Wednesday 2nd August 13:20 Our WAN link to Maun had been unstable since this morning. BTC say they are working to fix the line.

Tuesday 1st August 17:30 Once again many users of our BTC ADSL service are unable to access our mail or web servers. We suspect the problem is due to a routing mistake at BTC and we are trying to get them to resolve the problem.

Tuesday 25th July 2006 16:00 BTC have informed us of a planned maintenance session which will affect all their ADSL links from 12:00 midnight tonight until 01:00am

Friday 21st July 2006 08:05 Our WAN link to Francistown has been restored.

Friday 21st July 2006 08:00 Our WAN link to Francistown went down a few minutes ago. We are contacting BTC.

Wednesday 12th July 2006 10:00 Botswana Power Corporation have notified us of an emergency power interruption planned for 08:00 am tomorrow July 13th and lasting for three hours. Internet and email services to customers will not be affected however our cyber cafe will not be operating.

Tuesday 11th July 2006 16:35 BTC has notified us of a problem with two of their sub-exchanges which service the Commerce Park and Kgale areas. This may lead to congestion problems for ADSL customers in those areas.

Friday 30th June 2006 12:00 We have confirmed with other ISPs that they are also having major problems with the BTC ADSL service.

Friday 30th June 2006 10:55 There seems to be a problem with the BTC ADSL service again. As far as we can see the whole service is down. We are contacting BTC.

Thursday 29th June 2006 17:10 BTC have resolved the problem with their ADSL service that was preventing only our ADSL customers from accessing our local sites and their email.

Thursday 29th June 2006 14:40 Users of our BTC ADSL service are unable to browse locally hosted websites or retrieve their mail using POP even though other ISP's users of the BTC ADSL can access our sites and pop mail from our servers. We have determined that the problem is with the BTC ADSL service and have notified BTC.

Wednesday 21st June 2006 15:20 Our internet feed has been restored.

Wednesday 21st Jun 2006 15:15 Our internet feed via Europe is down due a temporary problem with our satellite provider. They hope to have service restored shortly.

Thursday 15th June 2006 14:00 Our link to Maun is down. BTC confirm they have a problem with their links towards Maun and are working on the problem.

Monday 12th June 2006 08:45 BTC have restored our Maun link.

Monday 12th June 2006 08:10 BTC confirm a fault in their network North of Palapye affecting our line to Maun.

Monday 12th June 2006 01:30 Our leased line to Maun is down. We have notified BTC but there is no one in the relevant department to deal with the fault.

Wednesday 31st May 2006 14:25 Customers in some parts of Gaborone are hearing a busy signal when dialing our 365-7600 number even though we have over 50 lines free. We are notifying BTC.

Saturday 20th May 2006 18:40 BTC restored our lines to Francistown and Phikwe at 18:20.

Saturday 20th May 2006 12:10 Our lines to Francistown and Phikwe are down again. BTC are aware of the problem and say their technicians are working on it. They have no estimate of when services will be restored.

Wednesday 17th May 2006 21:30 Our lines to Francistown and Phikwe have been stable since they were restored by BTC shortly after 17:00 today. We remind our customers who may have been dialing an alternate number during this time to revert to the old number to avoid unnecessary phone charges.

Wednesday 17th May 2006 11:25 Our lines to Francistown and Phikwe are still down. BTC say they are working on a repair but have no estimate when this will accomplished.

Wednesday 17th May 2006 07:50 Our lines to Francistown and Phikwe are down due to a BTC transmission problem near Palapye. We advise customers from those towns to connect using one of our Gaborone numbers (eg 365-7600) until such time as BTC manages to repair the fault.

Tuesday 16th May 2006 10:50 BTC restored our Maun link at 09:50. The line has been stable since then.

Tuesday 16th May 2006 08:00 BTC have still not restored our link to Maun. They say they had a switching problem in Maun which they erroneously thought had been fixed.

Monday 15th May 2006 13:40 Our link to Maun is still down. BTC are working on the problem.

Monday 15th May 2006 11:01 We are suffering a massive spam attack from Google/Gmail. Mail to and from Google or Gmail addresses will be delayed until Gmail has managed to stop the attack.

Monday 15th May 2006 10:30 There is a problem with our WAN link to Maun, we have contacted BTC.

Thursday 2nd May 2006 08:50 There may be a brief interruption to our services this morning at 10:00 am due to emergency work being carried out by a contractor. We apologize for the inconvenience we will endeavour to ensure there is as little disruption as possible.

Thursday 27th April 2006 14:13 BTC has restored the ISDN line that was down.

Thursday 27th April 2006 13:40 Following a power cut that affected a large part of Gaborone West one of our ISDN lines is down. We are investigating the cause.

Thursday 20th April 2006 17:45 One of our E1 lines comprising 30 dial-in circuits is down. We have notified BTC. Global customers unable to login on 365-6400 are advised to make a "proxy login" by dialing one of our Info Botswana numers eg 365-7600 and using their full email address as the login name eg mphok@global.bw Please call our helpdesk on 391-8444 for rather more intelligible instructions.

Tuesday 18th April 2006 08:00 Our WAN link to Maun is down. BTC say they are having transmission problems and are working to restore service.

Tuesday 11th April 2006 13:31 Our international internet feed has just been restored.

Tuesday 11th April 2006 13:25 Our international internet feed has just gone down due to a problem with our satellite provider. They hope to have service restored in a few minutes. Locally hosted websites including those hosted by members of the BINX are unaffected.

Tuesday 4th April 2006 09:55 There has been a problem with one of our mailservers - smtp.info.bw. This has now been resolved. There is an ongoing problem with our Proxy Server proxy.info.bw. This should be resolved shortly. If you are experiencing problems with either of these services then please call our helpdesk on 391-8444 for assistance. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Monday 20th March 2006 08:10 Our WAN link to Maun is down. BTC have been notified.

Sunday 25th February 2006 21:50 The last of the BW nameservers came back up at 21:35

Sunday 25th February 2006 21:20 The first of the Botswana (.bw) nameservers came back on-line at 20:33. A second one came back at 21:10 The third one is still down.

Sunday 25th February 2006 19:00 Incredibly BTC say this was a planned power outage. For the technically-minded this proves that despite the different class 'C' networks all of the BW nameservers are in one physical location at BTC. The only other nameserver which, according to the root nameservers,has records for BW, is a caching-only nameserver in South Africa. It will have records for frequently-used Botswana domains only.
BTC cannot say when the power will be restored.

Sunday 25th February 2006 18:50 All of the Botswana name servers have gone down again. This will create major problems for "dot-BW" websites and will create delays in mail for many local domains. We are notifying BTC.

Thursday 23rd February 2006 11:40 Our links to Francistown and Phikwe went down about 10 mins ago. We have notified BTC.

Thursday 23rd February 2006 07:55 The first of BTC's name servers came back online at 02:32 today. All mail should now have been delivered.

Wednesday 22nd February 2006 20:59 All of BTC's name servers are down. The last of them went down at 20:32. Many sites in Botswana will be unreachable from the outside world and there will be delays for mail. We have notified BTC.

Tuesday 14th February 2006 15:55 Our leased line to Maun is down. BTC have been notified.

Saturday 11th February 2006 12:35 The problem with one of our E1 lines on the 3657600 number has been addressed by BTC. Users are not currently getting a busy tone but the problem may return especially for users served by BTC's MSU-1 exchange in Khama Crescent.

Friday 10th February 2006 09:10 Customers are hearing a busy signal when dialing our 3657600 number even though we have many lines free. BTC has been notified. We advise our Info Botswana customers that they can make a "proxy-logon" through our Global POP on 365-6400 as long as they give their username in the form "userxyz@info.bw". Please do *not* use this syntax when checking your mail! For help please call our help desk on 391-8444

Tuesday 7th February 2006 12:05 There has been a problem with our Gaborone email number 391-8213 for the past two hours. The problem has now been resolved. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Thursday 2nd February 2006 18:28 BTC have been continuing to work on our leased line to Maun. The line has been up and down several times this afternoon. We apologize for the incovenience.

Tuesday 31st January 2006 16:00 Our service to customers in Maun has been very slow due to a problem with our BTC leased-line. BTC hope to have the problem fixed by tomorrow.

Thursday 12th January 2006 12:15 Our links to Francistown and Phikwe have been restored.

Thursday 12th January 2006 11:20 The power cut in Francistown is affecting all of Francistown. BPC have no estimate as to when power will be restored. Affected customers are advised to connect via Gaborone on 365-7600.

Thursday 12th January 2006 11:09 Due to a power failure in Francistown our WAN links to Francistown and Phikwe are down.

Thursday 16th December 2005 16:00 Our WAN link to Maun is down. BTC say they are having some transmission problems and the don't know when the links to Maun will be restored.

Monday 12th December 2005 12:00 BTC have a major problem with their management system and are therefore unable to fix the problem with our E1 line at present.

Monday 12th December 2005 08:15 There is a problem with one of our BTC-supplied digital E1 lines affecting 30 dial-in lines on the 365-7600 number. We have notified BTC. At present it is not affecting our customers but unless BTC act quickly customers will be getting a busy tone even though all of our lines are not in use.

Monday 12th December 2005 07:45 Our leased line to Maun is again down. This time the problem is with a BTC microwave link at Mopipi. BTC hope to have the service restored in about 30 minutes.

Sunday 11th December 2005 08:30 Our leased line to Maun is down due to scheduled BPC works affecting many lines. BPC say power will be restored at 14:00

Monday 5th December 2005 15:20 Our WAN links to Francistown and Phikwe are down. We have notified BTC.

Friday 2nd December 2005 11:35 Links to networks hosted via BTC's international links including all their adsl customers and, more importantly, all the servers able to answer DNS queries for the BW domain are temporarily unavailable. (BTC BGP route flaps). Some Botswana sites even those not hosted via BTC will be unavailable.

Friday 25th November 2005 12:05 Our satellite feed has been much improved but there is a possibility of further instability.

Friday 25th November 2005 08:20 There seems to be a problem with our satellite internet feed. We have asked our satelite provideer to investigate.

Tuesday 22nd November 2005 15:30 Our line to Maun is still down. BTC say they are still struggling to restore service.

Monday 21th November 2005 16:15 Our leased line to maun is down. BTC say they have a major problem with their fibre. There is no forecast as to when service will be restored.

Monday 21th November 2005 11:15 Another of our E1 lines carrying 30 dial-in circuits has just gone down. This brings to 90 the number of our lines that are down. We have notified BTC.

Sunday 20th November 2005 12:00 One of our ISDN PRI lines and another digital line providing 30 dial-in circuits are down. BTC have been notified. ISDN customers who need access are requested to call our help desk (391-8444) for instructions about a contingency plan we have activated to provide them with access. Global customers who are unable to connect can login using a "proxy logon" by dialing Info Botswana number (eg 365-7600 or 391-8263) and logging in using the syntax: username@global.bw
We remind our customers that we do have an "email-only" number, 391-8213, which always has lines free.

Sunday 20th November 2005 11:45 Info customers are having trouble accessing the POP server for the info.bw domain - mail.info.bw - in order to retrieve their mail. We are working to restore this service.

Thursday 3rd November 2005 16:15 Large parts of Gaborone are suffering brief power interruptions and more sustained brown-outs. BPC say they do not know the cause but are investigating. Our systems are unaffected but we have noticed that a number of our dialup and leased line customers are affected.

Thursday 3rd November 2005 15:25 Our lines to Phikwe and Francistown are down due to a power failure in F'Town. Customers in those towns are advised to dial one of our Gaborone numbers (eg 365-7600) or to log a call with our help desk (392-8444) so that they can be called back once service has been restored.

Wednesday 2nd November 2005 08:40 One of our digital E1 lines providing 30 dialup circuits has been periodically giving a busy tome even though there are many lines free. BTC say the cause is a software problem which is affecting many of their exchanges.

Thursday 15th September 2005 14:00 Our satellite provider is experiencing problems with their some of their internet links. Browsing to some sites will be slow. It may help to use our proxy server until such tme as service is fully restored.

Tuesday 6th September 2005 11:40 We have been sustaining a massive spam attack since last night. Our servers are coping but there may be some delays in processing incoming mail.

Monday 5th September 2005 09:10 We remind our customers that our satellite bandwidth provider will be carrying out scheduled maintenance on Tuesday 6th Sep from 04:00 to 05:00. Internet access may be disrupted during that period. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Friday 2nd September 20054 19:00 Our links to Francistown and Phikwe are down due to a power failure in Francistown. We hope that power will be restored in about 20 mins.

Wednesday 31st August 2005 08:20 Our satellite bandwidth provider has notified us of scheduled antenna maintenance which they will be carrying out at their teleport on Tuesday 6th Sep from 04:00 to 05:00. During that period internet access will be interrupted. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Friday 26th August 2005 17:25 Our leased lines to Francistown, Phikwe and Maun have just gone down. We are trying to convince BTC that they have a problem.

Tuesday 18th August 2005 17:55 Once again BTC have a problem with their exchange in Maun. Our line to Maun is currently down. BTC hope to have it up shortly.

Friday 12th August 2005 07:55 BTC have had a problem with their exchange in Maun. A number of customer lines have been affected. Our link, which had been down for 50 mins has now been restored.

Friday 5th August 2005 08:50 Our link to Maun is down again. BTC say they have a problem going towards Maun. They have no further details.

Wednesday 27th July 2005 11:20 Our link to Maun is down. BTC say they have a problem with their services between Mahalapye and Maun.

Friday 22nd July 2005 15:30 Our links to Phikwe are down due to a power failure affecting a large are of Phikwe.

Friday 22nd July 2005 15:00 Our customer leased lines have been restored.

Friday 22nd July 2005 12:55 BTC has experienced a major problem in the link between their MSU-1 and MSU-2 exchanges. Many of our customer leased lines are down. BTC have no further information as yet and no projected time for restoration of services.
Our dial-in lines and internet feed are unaffected.

Tuesday 5th July 2005 16:32 BTC has just fixed our Global E1 line.

Tuesday 5th July 2005 15:05 BTC have still not restored our Global E1 line. They say they are working on the problem but have not yet identified where the fault is with the line.

Tuesday 5th July 2005 10:48 One of our Global E1 dialin lines using 365-6400 is down. We have reported it to BTC. Global customers wishing to connect using a Gaborone number are advised to call our help desk on 391-8444 for instructions on how to perform a "proxy logon".

Monday 4th July 2005 18:10 BTC have restored connectivity to their name servers. They confirm that there was a problem but cannot provide any details.

Monday 4th July 2005 17:45 We note that all three of the BTC-hosted Botswana Name Servers are down. This will cause delays to mail for some local domains and may make some Botswana websites unreachable. We are attempting to notify BTC.

Thursday 30th June 2005 11:30 Our WAN link to Phikwe is down due to a power failure there.

Wednesday 29th June 2005 13:55 One of our Global E1 lines is down. We have reported it to BTC. Global customers wishing to connect using a Gaborone number are advised to call our help desk on 391-8444 for instructions on how to perform a "proxy logon".

Tuesday 28th June 2005 13:40 A number of our leased lines to customers are down. BTC say they are working on lines in the Commerce Park area.

Wednesday 22nd June 2005 13:00 Our lines to Francistown and Phikwe are down due to a power filaure in Francistown.

Monday 20th June 2005 10:04 Although our services using our WAN links to Maun and Fancistown are now working properly, we note that BTC still has serious congestion problems from some exchanges. In particular it is almost impossible to dial Maun and Francistown from Gaborone West, via BTC's MSU2 exchange while calls made by cell phone (Mascom) and routed via MSU1 are successful.

Monday 20th June 2005 08:10 There is a power cut affecting a large part of Gaborone West. All of our services are working normally and BTC say their exchanges are unaffected.

Monday 20th June 2005 08:05 BTC say that they repaired their fibre cut but there has been a second cut. Our leased lines to Phikwe and Francistown are still down.

Monday 20th June 2005 00:05 BTC have still not repaired their fibre cut. They now say they hope to have the job done before morning.

Sunday 19th June 2005 14:00 Our leased lines to Francistown and Phikwe are down. BTC say they have a fibre problem going North. They expect service to be resumed by the end of today.

Wednesday 15th June 2005 14:00 Our line to Phikwe is down. BTC say they have a fibre failure in Phikwe and are working on the problem.

Sunday 12th June 2005 09:00 Our lines to Francistown and Phikwe are down due to a power failure in Francistown.

Wednesday 8th June 2005 14:55 BTC are having problems with their frame-relay links to the North of the country. Our WAN links to Francistown, Maun and Phikwe are therefore going up and down. BTC do not have a time when the problem will be resolved.

Wednesday 25th May 2005 16:43 Our Global dial in number 3656400 is down. BTC have been notified. Global customers can still logon by dialling 3657600 and giving their full domain name as the username eg fred22@info.bw

Thursday 19th May 2005 08:10 We received the same DOS again. Our feed is now working properly.

Wednesday 18th May 2005 08:00 We are investigating a problem with our network that may be due to a denial of service attack.

Friday 13th May 2005 11:35 Our links to our POPs in Francistown, Phikwe and Maun recently went down. BTC say they are experiencing transmission problems to the North of the country.

Monday 2nd May 2005 12:30 Although some customers may have heard a network busy tone when dialing our 365-7600 number earlier this was due to exchange his was due to exchange congestion at BTC. All of our digital lines are working properly and we have plenty of free lines.

Thursday 28th April 15:15 Three of our E1 lines have been reset within the last ten minutes cutting off over seventy users. We have notified BTC.

Tuesday 19th April 08:45 Two of the three .BW nameservers are still down.

Friday 15th April 08:55 Two of BTC's nameservers responsible for Botswana are still unreachable. BTC say they are aware of the problem.

Thursday 14th April 08:45 Two of the three nameservers responsible for resolving names in the ".BW" namespace have been unreachable since late last night. If the third one goes down there will be major problems for Botrswana domains. We have notified BTC.

Friday 1st April 08:00 Our leased line to Francistown is down. We have notified BTC.

Thursday 31st March 15:03 BTC has justrestored our line to Maun.

Thursday 31st March 09:00 Our BTC line to Maun is still down. We are chasing BTC to get it repaired. We request that our non-postoffice customers dial in to our Francistown or Gaborone POPs. Customers should feel free to call our central help desk (391-8444) and leave their phone numbers if they would like to be notified once the service has been restored. Post office customers should contact our help desk if they would like to make alternative arrangements to receive mail. We apologize to opur customers for the inconvenience.

Wednesday 30th March 08:05 Maun Data Circuit is down,Customers in Maun will not will not be able to connect. BTC has been informed.

FFriday 11th March 12:21 Customers in some parts of town are getting a busy signal even though we have many lines free. BTC has been informed.

FFriday 11th March 08:45 BPC power has now been restored.

Friday 11th March 08:29 BTC have restored power at their exchange although they may have problems elsewhere.

Friday 11th March 08:05 There is a power cut affecting most of Gaborone (according to BPC), All of our systems are working fine but we notice that calls from BTC's main exchange are not coming through to us.

Thursday 10th March 14:08 From the pattern of dial-in usage we believe that there may, later, be problems for our customers based in the catchment area of BTC's MSU-1 exchange. We are contacting BTC to ask them to address this problem.

Tuesday 8th March 15:55 Our internet feed is back to normal.

Tuesday 8th March 15:49 There is a problem with our internet feed. We are investigating to determine the cause.

Thursday 3rd March 18:35 BTC have just reconnected our dial in lines.

Thursday 3rd March 17:55 At approximately 16:45 today BTC disconnected our 391-8263 dial-in number. This number serves 60 incoming lines. We believe that BTC carried out this disconnection in error as there had been no warning from them.
We have been trying to get BTC to reconnect the service but unfortunately the relevant BTC staff have either already finished work for the day or are not answering their cell phones. We will continue to try to get the service restored today.
We apologize for the inconvenience and request our customers to use the alternative 365-7600 number which has plenty of spare capacity.

Wednesday 2nd March 12:45 Our satellite feed was restored at 12:41 - somewhat later than promised.

Wednesday 2nd March 10:43 Our satellite provider confirms that they have a major technical problem which they are addressing. The internet feed probably be down for 30 minutes.
Please note that you may continue to send and receive mail and no mail will be lost. We apologize for the inconvenience. Customers are welcome to leave their phone numbers with our help desk if they wish to be notifed upon return of service.

Wednesday 2nd March 10:35 There is a problem with our satellite internet feed. We are contacting our upstream provider.

Monday 28th February 09:05 Power was restored at 08:58

Monday 28th February 08:52 There is a power cut affecting all of Gaborone West. We have been running on backup power since 08:20. Although we do not expect any interruption to our services it is possible that customers connecting to us via BTC dialup or leased lines may experience problems if BTC runs out of power at their exchanges or sub-exchanges.

Monday 14th February 08:15 Once again there is a problem with one of our E1 lines. Although we have plenty of lines available customers may get busy tones in some parts of town.

Thursday 10th February 08:35 We are contuning to experience problems with our E1 lines. We also see that another digital line, previously unaffected, has been reset twice today. We are seeking an urgent meeting with BTC to resolve these problems.

Wednesday 9th February 08:45 Customers are getting busy signals when connecting on our 3657600 from some parts of town even though we have many lines free. We are investigating with BTC.

Wednesday 9th February 08:20 We are liasing with BTC to try to solve the problem with our E1 lines. Unfortunately we note that they have just reset a different E1 line cutting off 25 users.

Tuesday 8th February 16:10 BTC are trying to solve the problems with our E1 lines. However it seems that one of them is now down completely. Another of our E1 lines has been cut numerous times today cutting off many users. We are continuing to chase BTC.

Tuesday 8th February 10:00 We still have problems with two of our E1 lines. At present users are unaffected but there may be problems with false busy tones later if BTC cannot resolve the problem.

Tuesday 8th February 07:55 There is a problem with one of our E1 dial-in lines. 23 dial-in lines are unavailable. We are trying to report the problem to BTC. Another of our E1 lines also was briefly reset cutting off 23 users.

Thursday 3rd February 14:35 We have identified a problems with one of our dial-in E1 lines. Customers are not affected as yet as we have a lot of spare capacity. We have notified BTC.

Friday 14th January 10:45 BTC's internet feed has been restored.

Friday 14th January 10:25 BTC lost their internet feed at 09:30 today. This does not immediately affect our customers or services. Botswana DNS queries are being answered by two out of four external DNS servers.

2005

Wednesday 29th December 18:25 BTC's links to Francistown were restored at 17:20 but Maun remains down

Wednesday 29th December 15:50 Our links to Francistown and Maun are down. BTC say they are having trouble with their lines to ther North and will investigate.

Thursday 16th December 10:50 BTC is currently upgrading our links to our customers. There will be a brief (circa 6 minutes) interruption to one of our digital dial-in lines during this process. We expect that only a handful of users will suffer busy tones while this work is carried out.

Monday 13th December 11:05 While trying to attend to a noisy line on one of our ISDN lines BTC has accidentally disconnected one of our E1 lines. Customers may experience busy tones on our Global number 3656400. BTC is attending to the problem.

Monday 6th December 08:40 Our WAN link to MAun is down we have reported it to BTC.

Thursday 2nd December 17:40 BTC appears to have fixed their internet connectivity at 17:10.

Thursday 2nd December 15:30 BTC lost their internet connect at 14:30. This has no effect on our internet feed but mail to BTC hosted domains will be delayed. Botswana DNS seems to be working properly. BTC have no estimate as to when their feed will be restored.

Tuesday 29th November 12:25 BTC have just added 30 new lines to our hunt group on 3657600. Customers using BTC's MSU2 exchange had a brief period of congestion but all our lines are now working well. Customers are advised to use 3657600 if they get a busy tone on our other numbers. Hopefully there will not be busy tones on this number.

Tuesday 23rd November 15:10 BTC has fixed our GIA E1 but they seem to have done so at the expense of one of our Info E1 lines. We have reported this also to BTC.

Tuesday 23rd November 11:40 One of our E1 lines providing 30 diaslup circuits to our GIA customers is down. BTC has been informed.

Saturday 6th November 12:50 BTC has restored our Phikwe and F'Town links.

Saturday 6th November 10:05 Our links to Francistown and Phikwe are down. We have reported the matter to BTC.

Friday 5th November 13:45 One of our digital E1 lines has beeb down for some minutes - we presume this is due to BTC staff investigating the failure of our ISDN line.

Friday 5th November 13:30 One of our ISDN lines comprising 30 dialup circuits is down. BTC are investigating the problem.

Thursday 4th November 15:15 - BTC have experienced a fibre cut between Pilane and Mochudi. Our lines to Francistown, Phikwe and Maun are therefore down.

Monday 1st November 16:05 - One of our BTC E1 lines is down. This means we have 30 dialin lines down. We are investigating the problem.

Tuesday 26th October 16:42 - A power cut is affecting large parts of Gaborone West. We do not envisage any interruption to our services at this stage although there may problems with some BTC sub exchanges.

Monday 25th October 12:10 - All of our lines are working again.

Monday 25th October 12:05 - Our Info E1 has been restored but now one of our Global E1 lines serving 3656400 is down. BTC have confirmed they are working in the problem.

Monday 25th October 11:20 - One of our BTC E1 lines carrying 30 dialin lines is down. BTC is unable to investigate at present as they say their management system is down.

Thursday 21st October 12:15 - BTC are still struggling to effect a permanent repair to their Maun-Palapye link. The link was down, has just come up again but will probably go down again later as BTC continue their efforts.

Thursday 21st October 07:55 - BTC's link from Palapye to Maun is down again. It was operational for most of yesterday.

Wednesday 20th October 07:50 - Our WAN link to Maun is down. BTC are having problems with their line to Maun.

Wednesday 13th October 13:25 - BTC are having trouble with their links to Maun. Our WAN link to Maun will be down until BTC resolves the problem.

Friday 8th October 12:40 - An urgent piece of system maintenance will be carried out during lunchtime today. Most users will be unaffected but there may delays in logging on for a few minutes just after 13:00.

Friday 8th October 11:45 - Our WAN link to Phikwe is down due to a major power cut affecting large parts of Phikwe.