The In­ter­net is a por­tal for ac­cess to a mul­ti­tude of busi­ness, so­cial, pro­fes­sion­al, ed­u­ca­tion­al, en­ter­tain­ment apps and oth­er con­tent. Yet for all of its per­va­sive­ness, use of the In­ter­net to im­prove busi­ness and ed­u­ca­tion re­mains an im­por­tant chal­lenge for de­ci­sion-mak­ers in the re­gion.

For this rea­son Blink Broad­band, one of the largest In­ter­net Ser­vice Providers in T&T, par­al­lels its com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions with an equal­ly ag­gres­sive so­cial pro­gramme. The aim is to in­cul­cate the use of In­ter­net-based tech­nol­o­gy for in­di­vid­u­als, ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions and busi­ness­es at risk of miss­ing out on op­por­tu­ni­ties af­ford­ed by hav­ing In­ter­net ac­cess.

Few will doubt the over­whelm­ing im­pact the In­ter­net has had on so­ci­eties the world over. As at June 2012, it is es­ti­mat­ed that there were al­most 2.5 bil­lion In­ter­net users world­wide. The Caribbean/Latin Amer­i­can re­gion has the fourth high­est ra­tio of In­ter­net users among the sev­en re­gions of the world. The re­gion's 43 per cent av­er­age pen­e­tra­tion is high­er than the world av­er­age of 34 per cent, but it is far be­hind the 60 per cent to 80 per cent seen in the more de­vel­oped re­gions of Eu­rope, Ocea­nia/Aus­tralia and North Amer­i­ca.

One of Blink Broad­band's Ed­u­ca­tion­al Pro­grammes in­volves its part­ner­ship with Youth Train­ing and Em­ploy­ment Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme (Ytepp). The project aims to pro­vide young peo­ple tar­get­ed by Ytepp who are out of school and un­em­ployed, with train­ing to de­vel­op and en­hance their skills to suc­cess­ful­ly en­ter the work­place.

Among the pro­grammes of­fered is com­put­er lit­er­a­cy which is cre­ative­ly sup­port­ed by three bus­es con­vert­ed to mo­bile In­ter­net units with com­put­ers and sup­port­ing equip­ment and broad­band In­ter­net ac­cess.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port by Can­to and the IDB, one of the main bar­ri­ers to broad­band pen­e­tra­tion in the Caribbean is a lack of aware­ness and un­der­stand­ing about how in­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) can con­tribute to gen­er­at­ing eco­nom­ic growth and stim­u­lat­ing in­no­va­tion.

Blink Broad­band has been at the fore­front in pro­mot­ing the in­clu­sive­ness of In­ter­net ac­cess as a ver­sa­tile so­lu­tion for any en­ter­prise. One such ini­tia­tive in­volves the Mas­quer­ade In­dus­try of T&T (MITT). MITT was de­vel­oped by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val De­vel­op­ment Foun­da­tion and is a vi­brant lo­cal in­dus­try made up of sev­er­al small busi­ness­es.

The T&T Coali­tion Ser­vice In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) un­der­took a project with Blink Broad­band to utilise ICT to fos­ter the de­vel­op­ment of MITT. The goal of the project is to sup­port the glob­al­i­sa­tion of the T&T mas­quer­ade in­dus­try through tech­nol­o­gy, en­hanc­ing the in­dus­try's glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness, reach and de­vel­op­ing a sus­tain­able lo­cal in­dus­try.

With the just-con­clud­ed SEA ex­am­i­na­tions, Blink Broad­band had more than just a ca­su­al in­ter­est in stu­dents go­ing in­to the ex­ams well pre­pared. BLINK had pre­vi­ous­ly part­nered with Pen­na­cool.com, a SEA tu­to­r­i­al web­site, to en­cour­age SEA stu­dents in their prepa­ra­tions.The com­pa­ny par­tic­i­pat­ed in Pen­na­cool.com's an­nu­al va­ca­tion camp which pro­vid­ed on­line tu­tor­ing and prepa­ra­tion for SEA stu­dents. For par­tic­i­pat­ing in the tu­to­ri­als, stu­dents won ex­cit­ing tech prizes cour­tesy Blink Broad­band.

The nov­el­ty of Pen­na­cool.com was that it al­lowed stu­dents any­where and any­time to do prac­tice tests and see their score so they could see where they need­ed to fo­cus more learn­ing. The ease and con­ve­nience and prompt­ness of feed­back demon­strat­ed the pow­er of the In­ter­net to pro­vide valu­able and time­ly sup­port to stu­dents mak­ing this first big step in their ed­u­ca­tion.