And I do not mean that the vast majority of Ecuadorians that have no access to the network by the low penetration in the country but the problem that we, those who are lucky enough to have access to this increasingly necessary service have been suffering from approximately 20:00 on Wednesday, June 3rd.

Around that time my connection (in the city of Tulcan) to internet died, it was not a problem from home network, or last mile. I tried to ping and get in to other networks that the company for which I work has in other cities and the response was positive, it had ping response and an access to local networks in Ecuador but the internet was just dead, as I commented in Twitter through a data connection from a BlackBerry Porta. Minutes later, my wife confirmed to me that their home Internet connection that her mother has contracted in Sangolquí, Pichincha, CNT was also dead. A little later (in fact it seems that Palulo was the first to report it) Palulo announced that his connection with Pelileo CNT also had problems, and Gandho in Quito also announced that his connection was dead.

My provider is not the CNT, apparently it was not just a problem of Corporación Nacional de Telecomunicaciones but several vendors who shared some international departure as I assumed.

Today in the morning checking my links I saw the connection of the company I work (a small ISP) had returned at 22:00. At 08:00 today Thursday June 4 a representative of my suppliers called me to inform me that a possible terrorist attack in Colombia damaged two towers of Transnexa where the fiber goes to Ecuador that comes to the internet and they had enabled a backup link but with higher latency times and lower capacity as an emergency measure, after that, Palulo confirmed the same in Twitter : a problem with the Transnexa’s fiber had left half Ecuador without internet.

On Twitter a few people reported problems with their connection, and those that did were mostly in the Sierra region, it seems that the coast had no problem since, as I confirmed later, the share of what was Pacifictel has other different outputs to what was Andinatel.

As the morning progressed my link was improving but it began to appear more users, especially in Quito, complaining of their connection.La Hueca, Interdigi, Paola_ec among others publish their news on the problem in the famous micro blogging network.

Subsequently Carlos Jumbo published a worrying reference, José García the sub-Technology Editor of the Magazine Enter of El Tiempo in Colombia announced that the problem is not in Colombia and there is no news of any attack, also Palulo makes a recording public with the call center of the CNT, where they confirmed the problem with Transnexa. A contact inside the transmission of technical data, again verified that the version they have is the attack and that the region that was before Andinatel had more traffic by Transnexa that from the exit that Telefónica enabled to Ecuador recently and that for this problem were migrating to an exit by Sprint, the same from Telefónica and even for Guayaquil (which I was not clear if it is the same from Telefónica). From TVCable another member of the technical area informed me that they also have the version of problems with the output of Transnexa for Colombia but they did not mention that was the result of an attack or something like it. He also told me that they have been suffering major problems of latency time for the output they have with Telefónica as a consequence of the fracture suffered by the submarine cable by an earthquake that recently happened in Honduras and had to halt several migrations that were intended to make toward the side of Transnexa because they reported the problem with that connection.

Now it’s 13:30 on Thursday June 4th and the problem persists although some providers have already taken emergency backup. In my particular case we are 70% of our full capacity and latency time slightly higher than normal, in Twitter there are still reports of difficulties and problems with internet access. It has been over 15 hours since the start of the problem and we have not heard of any official communication and worse in some traditional media reporting.

We hope the problem to be quickly solved and helps to take more measures to avoid similar situations in the future.