Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party (AD) has urged the Malta Communications Authority (MCA) to strengthen the regulation of internet provision.

AD said recent events have shown how fragile the current internet provision can be, particularly since there are currently just two cables – both owned by private companies – connecting the local internet to the European backbone.

The party said regulations should be in place for extraordinary events; each cable operator has to be allowed to use appropriate bandwidth from its competitor when technical faults occur in their cable connectivity.

AD’s IT spokesperson Henrik Piski said: “When the GO internet cable connectivity interruption occurred ten days ago, the public realised that there was no real fallback procedure in place.

“GO users were not able to use the international internet connection. As Malta has a particular geographical position and connectivity to the international hub is only provided by two companies, the MCA has to make sure that such occurrences do not happen again. It is not acceptable to have to wait months or years till alternative cables to the next hub are put in place.

“The existing infrastructure has to be fairly shared between the two operators under the supervision of the MCA in these extraordinary circumstances,” concluded Mr Piski.