Ger­ard Best

A meet­ing of in­ter­na­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy ex­perts will con­sid­er the dis­rup­tive im­pact of the In­ter­net on the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions op­er­a­tors' tra­di­tion­al busi­ness. Called IN­ET T&T, the two-day meet­ing starts to­day at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty (TATT) of­fice in Barataria.How are re­gion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions op­er­a­tors adapt­ing, as Caribbean cit­i­zens' ap­petite goes fur­ther and fur­ther be­yond the scope of tra­di­tion­al voice-call net­works to en­com­pass more broad­band In­ter­net-based ser­vices?

In Ju­ly, mo­bile sub­scribers across the re­gion com­plained bit­ter­ly af­ter re­gion­al mo­bile op­er­a­tors Dig­i­cel and LIME moved to block Voice over In­ter­net Pro­to­col (VoIP) ser­vices over their net­works. The con­sen­sus among sev­er­al Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean In­ter­net and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­dus­try ex­perts is that op­er­a­tors will con­tin­ue to take ad­van­tage of con­sumers un­til stronger reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works are built to pro­tect sub­scribers.

Is­sues such as the man­age­ment of over-the-top ser­vices like VoIP will be come to the fore to­mor­row.