Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Gov­ern­ment has plans to in­tro­duce broad­band In­ter­net ser­vice to all cit­i­zens, ac­cord­ing to Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, who out­lined a com­pre­hen­sive plan to make the ser­vice avail­able. She said 46 out of every 100 house­holds had ac­cess to broad­band In­ter­net ser­vice at this time. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the min­is­ter said, the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum ranked T&T among the top five coun­tries in the world in terms of mo­bile tele­phone pen­e­tra­tion. Seep­er­sad-Bachan said Gov­ern­ment's poli­cies for progress were pur­pose­ful and fo­cussed with the pri­ma­ry in­ten­tion of sus­tain­able so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. She said the pol­i­cy di­rec­tion in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions is aimed at sup­port­ing Gov­ern­ment's thrust in di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and build­ing a new knowl­edge-based econ­o­my. Seep­er­sad-Bachan was the fea­ture speak­er at the open­ing of the Com­mon­wealth Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Or­gan­i­sa­tion's (CTO) ninth fo­rum at the Hilton Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on Mon­day. The con­fer­ence ends to­day.

She said this coun­try's telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing sec­tors con­tributed 3.4 per cent of the gross do­mes­tic prod­uct which amounts to more than $4.4 bil­lion per an­num. Seep­er­sad-Bachan said: "In the con­text of the theme of this year's fo­rum, Broad­band for a Net­work So­ci­ety, Trinidad and To­ba­go has record­ed a to­tal of 171,000 fixed In­ter­net sub­scribers with more than 163,000 be­ing sub­scribers of six broad­band In­ter­net ser­vices as at the end of 2010. "Broad­band In­ter­net ac­count­ed for 95 per cent of fixed In­ter­net sub­scrip­tions in our coun­try." She said there are six broad­band op­er­a­tors in the coun­try and as with most mar­kets, com­pe­ti­tion among play­ers led to im­proved qual­i­ty of ser­vice and af­ford­abil­i­ty for con­sumers.

At the end of last year, The In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union ranked T&T as hav­ing the low­est month­ly fixed broad­band In­ter­net sub­scrip­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$12 when com­pared with oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion. Seep­er­sad-Bachan said: "As at 2011, res­i­den­tial sub­scribers now en­joy In­ter­net speeds of up to 100 megabits per sec­ond. "Fur­ther, ac­cord­ing to the 2010/2011 Glob­al In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Re­port pub­lished by the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum, Trinidad and To­ba­go ranked 14th as hav­ing the low­est fixed broad­band In­ter­net tar­iffs in the world." She told stake­hold­ers at the fo­rum that the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T is in the process of con­duct­ing a dig­i­tal di­vide sur­vey and the re­sults would be avail­able in two to three months.

The min­is­ter said the re­sults will be used by Gov­ern­ment for its uni­ver­sal­i­ty plan which seeks to fa­cil­i­tate ac­ces­si­ble and af­ford­able ba­sic telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice to its cit­i­zens. "Much work, there­fore, lies in front of us and sev­er­al strate­gies and ini­tia­tives are cur­rent­ly be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment and its agen­cies to deep­en the pen­e­tra­tion of broad­band ser­vices in the coun­try. "And we have wast­ed no time in clear­ly map­ping the way for­ward," Seep­er­sad-Bachan said.

Among the plans are: Im­ple­men­ta­tion of an en­hanced broad­band strat­e­gy plan; use of in­cen­tives; leg­isla­tive amend­ments; im­ple­men­ta­tion of an ex­change point; wire­less ac­cess to broad­band ser­vices.