Act­ing CEO of TSTT George Hill, ad­dress­ing a To­ba­go au­di­ence at the launch of the Ma­hogany Fi­bre-to-the-Com­mu­ni­ty project, said more than $15 mil­lion was be­ing spent by blink | bmo­bile in bring­ing fi­bre op­tics clos­er to thou­sands more homes through­out T&T.Res­i­dents of Mil­ford Court are among the first in To­ba­go to ben­e­fit from this tech­nol­o­gy, which will al­low the com­mu­ni­ty and even­tu­al­ly oth­ers, to ben­e­fit from Blink's Quad Play ser­vice pack­ages and price bun­dles.

Hill said To­ba­go was one of the fo­cal ar­eas in the com­pa­ny's five-year strate­gic plan, for de­liv­ery of in­creased fi­bre op­tic and wire­less broad­band as well as im­proved mo­bile cov­er­age."Res­i­dents and busi­ness­es will be able to ac­cess the com­plete quin­tu­ple port­fo­lio of voice, broad­band, en­ter­tain­ment, se­cu­ri­ty and mo­bile," he said.Hill added the com­pa­ny's five-year strate­gic plan in­clud­ed pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with a new ex­pe­ri­ence by giv­ing them bet­ter choic­es and more con­trol to de­fine the ser­vices they want.

He said: "Our dri­ve is to be­come more re­spon­sive to what cus­tomers want and to have the flex­i­bil­i­ty to de­liv­er those di­verse wants on a fu­ture-proof IP-based core in­fra­struc­ture."He said it was hoped that To­ba­go would be­come a broad­band par­adise which at­tracts sig­nif­i­cant for­eign in­vest­ment.The in­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (ITU) has es­ti­mat­ed that by the end of 2014, the glob­al av­er­age for broad­band pen­e­tra­tion in homes will be about 44 per cent.

Among de­vel­oped coun­tries, that av­er­age is clos­er to 78 per cent of house­holds which the ITU says is ap­proach­ing sat­u­ra­tion. T&T is well above the glob­al av­er­age at 55 per cent and with the launch of blink | bmo­bile's Long Term Evo­lu­tion and Fi­bre-to-the-Com­mu­ni­ty projects, the com­pa­ny's tar­get is to achieve 95 per cent cov­er­age of the coun­try.Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine said the launch is wel­comed as it fits in­to the Com­pre­hen­sive Eco­nom­ic Plan of the THA.

"In­deed To­ba­go is an is­land dri­ven by tourism and we are mind­ful of what in­creased con­nec­tiv­i­ty can do for our com­pet­i­tive­ness, and for the flow of re­sources in and out of our coun­try, be it for eco­nom­ic and oth­er en­deav­ours."So I ex­pect this new thrust will touch every as­pect of our dai­ly lives and as such it will stand to im­prove the stan­dard and qual­i­ty of liv­ing for all of us in To­ba­go," she said

Al­so ad­dress­ing the launch were Agnes Webbe, di­rec­tor–Hu­man Cap­i­tal De­vel­op­ment Unit who rep­re­sent­ed To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Del­mon Bak­er, and THA As­sem­bly­man Huey Cadette, Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion, Youth Af­fairs and Sport, who is the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Canaan/Bon Ac­cord where the project was launched. Webbe, in bring­ing greet­ing on be­half of the min­is­ter, spoke about the align­ment of the project to the work of the min­istrys in "the de­vel­op­ment of To­ba­go's hu­man cap­i­tal".