blink-bmo­bile has re­newed its com­mit­ment to as­sist the Gov­ern­ment by be­com­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy part­ner in the re­cent­ly un­veiled Star.tt ICT Ac­cess Cen­tre in Cumana, To­co.

On March 26, the Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy launched the sec­ond in­stal­ment of the Star.tt Project, an ini­tia­tive that em­bod­ies the min­istry's man­date to fa­cil­i­tate the up­take and use of ICTs in T&T. The over­ar­ch­ing goal of this project is to re­duce the dig­i­tal di­vide preva­lent in un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties. This mis­sion is con­sis­tent with blink-bmo­bile's plans to de­vel­op the coun­try by build­ing broad­band in­fra­struc­ture that would in­crease in­ter­net pen­e­tra­tion in rur­al and/or low in­come ar­eas.

With pre-ex­ist­ing ties to Cumana and as a part of its cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, blink-bmo­bile, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the min­istry, has worked to em­pow­er these res­i­dents by in­stalling high speed fi­bre op­tic links to the cen­tre to sup­ply voice and da­ta us­age to pa­trons. In ad­di­tion to pro­vid­ing high-speed broad­band In­ter­net con­nec­tion, blink-bmo­bile, by way of its Blink Vig­i­lance alarm mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem, has put mea­sures in place to en­sure that the cen­tre is se­cure against van­dal­ism and oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

In his ad­dress, Min­is­ter of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith en­cour­aged res­i­dents to use the cen­tre as an av­enue to in­crease their skills and ex­plore their knack for busi­ness. Al­so present at the launch, Win­ston Pe­ters, Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments as he urged res­i­dents to em­brace the fa­cil­i­ty and har­ness the pos­si­bil­i­ties that now lie at their fin­ger­tips. Pe­ters said the cen­tre was a gift to the com­mu­ni­ty and they should use it to en­rich their lives.

Re­flect­ing on this year's theme for World Tech­nol­o­gy and In­for­ma­tion So­ci­ety Day, Broad­band for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, act­ing CEO of TSTT George Hill not­ed that stake­hold­ers like the Gov­ern­ment and blink-bmo­bile must col­lab­o­rate to en­sure that "every­one, re­gard­less of their ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tion, can be ex­posed to the same op­por­tu­ni­ties in or­der to de­vel­op to their fullest po­ten­tial."

Hill fur­ther said that "through these part­ner­ships we can ac­cel­er­ate the rate at which Trinidad and To­ba­go be­comes the best con­nect­ed coun­try in the Caribbean."

Fur­nished with user friend­ly, state-of-the-art tech­nol­o­gy and pow­ered by Blink high-speed broad­band In­ter­net, the Cumana Star.tt ICT Ac­cess Cen­tre pro­vides the fa­cil­i­ties to as­sist in pro­pelling the so­cial, eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment of Cumana and by ex­ten­sion T&T.

The cy­ber­cafe al­lows users who vis­it the cen­tre to browse the In­ter­net to ac­cess in­for­ma­tion in­clud­ing e-gov­ern­ment ser­vices, on­line class­es and busi­ness and ca­reer op­por­tu­ni­ties. In ad­di­tion to the com­put­ers avail­able at the cen­tre, res­i­dents can use the charg­ing port to recharge their mo­bile phones, tablets and lap­tops and browse the In­ter­net for free at the Wi-Fi pa­tio.