Senate unit addresses claims of internet and aircon outage

The Senate service unit has submitted a report following the alleged WiFi outage and air conditioning interruption inside the Session Hall on Monday, June 1.

In a memo submitted on Tuesday, Mario Antonio Sulit, Director III of Management Information Systems Service, said that upon receiving reports that the temperature inside the Session Hall was raised, the maintenance team inspected the centralized air-conditioning system in the Senate premises. They also coordinated with the Government Service Insurance System to ask where power supply of Air Handling Unit electrical panel boards are located.

The GSIS later informed the Senate that the "electrical circuit breaker located at GSIS tripped around 5:30PM on even date."

"The Senate centralized air- conditioning was restored around 6:20 p.m.," it continued, adding that they are waiting for an official incident report from the GSIS.

In another memo, the MIS Service confirmed that there was no internet disruption "at any given time," including the 5 to 7 p.m. when the Sessional was used.

"Based on our monitoring, wireless internet traffic was actually at its peak during this period, with the wireless access point located at the Session Hall recording the highest level of activity," Sulit said.

He continued: "This indicates that users were actively connected and utilizing the Wi-Fi network. Furthermore, if an internet outage had occurred, the RUCKUS Cloud-based Controller, which manages and monitors the Senate Wi-Fi network, would have automatically generated alerts via SMS and email notifying us that the wireless access points had lost connectivity to the internet."

The memorandum also attached the wireless internet traffic charts and monitoring reports that confirms their report.

This was after Sen. Erwin Tulfo claimed on Monday that while the minority senators waited for the session to begin, the air conditioning and Wi-Fi were turned off.

Talking to the press, Tulfo said that Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano asked the minority to join them in boycotting the Senate so that it can maintain its independence following the arrest of Sen. Jinggoy Estrada.

"Bakit kami sasama sa pag bo-boycott sa kanya? So, kami magtrabaho lang, siguro sila ayaw nilang mag trabaho. It's up to them, so hinostage nila kami," he said.

"Tapos pinatayan pa kami ng aircon, pinatayan pa kami ng WiFi," he claimed.

When asked who asked to turn it off, Tulfo replied, "Syempre, sino bang nasa majority? Edi sila."