(UPDATE) - The Senate on Tuesday abruptly suspended budget debates in plenary due to internet connectivity issues as most of its members are participating through online video conferencing.
The livestream of the Senate budget debates was cut around 2:30 p.m., shortly after internet provider Converge announced a nationwide outage.
"There was a sudden power surge in some areas. Nadamay ang internet (The internet connection was affected)," Senate President Vicente Sotto III told ABS-CBN News in a text message.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology "immediately troubleshot our connections," he said.
In a Facebook post, Converge apologized to its subscribers, admitting that it was "experiencing issues" in its data center. It was unclear whether they were related to recent storms which damaged power and communication infrastructure.
"Our technical team is already working to resolve the issue at the soonest possible time," Converge's post read.
Prior to Converge's November 17 nationwide outage, senators have already been complaining about connectivity issues in the chamber after several hearings had to be suspended.
'Comedy of errors': Hearing on PH web status suspended over poor internet connection
In March, the Senate began allowing its members to participate in hearings and plenary sessions remotely to curb the spread of COVID-19.
The Senate's session resumed at 2:52 p.m.
'Converge' trends on Twitter
Amid the outage, the word ‘Converge’ trended on Twitter Tuesday as some of its customers across the country experienced internet connection problems.
‘Converge’ reached the second spot among Philippine trends following the announcement of the service outage due to a ‘power issue.’
Third year management accounting student Karl Dailisan told ABS-CBN News that this scenario is not new for him as he usually experiences internet connection problems with the internet service provider.
“So far, it's okay. It's fast, I'll give them that. However, there are times when the connection will be lost without notice. The real struggle is, it's very hard to contact their customer support,” the Converge user of more than a year told ABS-CBN News.
“And when you finally get a hold of their customer support, it has a long queue because of the numerous complaints,” added the University of Santo Tomas student doing distance learning in Cainta, Rizal.
Working from home, social media specialist Angelo De Vera, 21, said many Filipinos rely on their internet service providers heavily amid the pandemic.
“[Napapadalas] talaga 'yung pagsira niya and now na mas maraming taong nagwo-work from home at nago-online class talagang mas marami ang nakaka-experience nung effects ng walang net sa bahay, hence we tweet and post online,” he said.
(Frequently, there are internet connection problems and more are now working from home or doing online classes and a lot of people are experiencing the effects of not having internet connection at home, hence we tweet and post online.) — with a report from Josiah Antonio, ABS-CBN News
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