Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

John Delves, Dig­i­cel's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, said he be­lieves T&T's telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy is on par with the re­gion and the rest of the world and is mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion with the num­ber porta­bil­i­ty ini­tia­tive. This year both ser­vice providers launched their 4g net­work, with Dig­i­cel be­ing the first in May to of­fer cus­tomers this lat­est tech­nol­o­gy fol­lowed by Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) in No­vem­ber.

In a Guardian re­port last month, Cris Seecha­ran, pres­i­dent of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T, said it has plans of rolling out num­ber porta­bil­i­ty to help im­prove the qual­i­ty of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­dus­try and to en­sure cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. Num­ber porta­bil­i­ty would al­low cus­tomers to have one cell­phone num­ber. In the event a cus­tomer wish­es to switch providers due to poor ser­vice, it can be done with­out the has­sle and in­con­ve­nience of chang­ing cell num­bers.

Seecha­ran said this flex­i­bil­i­ty would force ser­vice providers to main­tain a high qual­i­ty stan­dard of ser­vice for fear of los­ing cus­tomers. Delves said Dig­i­cel's net­work is very pre­pared to pro­vide that in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard and qual­i­ty for the two ini­tia­tives as it has been do­ing quite well with its 4G net­work. "We be­lieve we have the best net­work and the bet­ter brand and I think num­ber porta­bil­i­ty is great for the in­dus­try."

While Delves em­braces the idea, he said Dig­i­cel hopes great con­sid­er­a­tion is giv­en to the cost of the project. "I be­lieve that the role TATT plays as the reg­u­la­tor, they would look at var­i­ous mod­els that can be used for num­ber porta­bil­i­ty to en­sure what­ev­er is im­ple­ment­ed is cost ef­fec­tive."

Delves said Dig­i­cel was con­fi­dent it could fit right in­to the ini­tia­tive as the key to its six-and-a-half years in the T&T mar­ket has been con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment. Ac­cord­ing to Pyra­mid Re­search Analy­sis Web site, mo­bile num­ber porta­bil­i­ty (MNP) was first in­sti­tut­ed in the Unit­ed States on No­vem­ber 24, 2003-a date wire­less car­ri­ers feared most.

It said US mo­bile op­er­a­tors braced them­selves for what they ex­pect­ed to be one of the largest chal­lenges with­in their in­dus­try, but 18 months af­ter its in­tro­duc­tion, num­ber porta­bil­i­ty has been more of a lum­ber­ing ele­phant and less of a roar­ing li­on.

The 4G en­vi­ron­ment

Re­gard­ing the com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment with the 4G net­work, Delves said Dig­i­cel has been do­ing "fan­tas­tic." "We are proud to be the first to in­tro­duce the 4G net­work on May 11. Our cus­tomers have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a very good launch ex­pe­ri­ence be­cause we had a full two months of test­ing to make sure we are the best we could pos­si­bly be."

Delves said since its launch, Dig­i­cel's cus­tomer base has grown. "We have by far the best val­ue in the mar­ket­place, not just for post­paid, but pre­paid cus­tomers be­cause we are fo­cus on mak­ing the 4G af­ford­able to all. Dig­i­cel, he said, launched its in­no­v­a­tive plan just three weeks ago, called the pre­paid com­bo plan, which gives cus­tomers 70 hours of talk time, free In­ter­net, Face­book mes­sag­ing.

Delves said Dig­i­cel make sure it is the most com­pet­i­tive provider, adding that its busi­ness so­lu­tions has been a huge growth area. He said 2012 was a great year for the com­pa­ny, but 2013 promis­es to be even bet­ter with plans on im­prov­ing the 4G net­work pack­age. "It's a whole new world. 4G brings 613000 apps on Google (On­line) Store, where the vast ma­jor­i­ty is free."