In a space of just ten years, the num­ber of mo­bile phone sub­scribers in T&T has in­creased from 530,000 sub­scribers in 2004 to 1,980,000 sub­scribers as at De­cem­ber 2014.

Da­ta from the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) al­so shows that the coun­try's telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing sec­tors gen­er­at­ed an es­ti­mat­ed $5.5 bil­lion in 2013, an in­crease of four per cent over the pre­vi­ous year. This equates to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3.1 per cent of gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP).

In re­sponse to this rapid de­vel­op­ment on those sec­tors, the TATT plans to "de­vel­op a healthy equi­lib­ri­um be­tween in­dus­try growth and con­sumer de­light" by strength­en­ing its leg­isla­tive and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry in­stru­ments to dri­ve greater con­sumer fo­cus in a mar­ket tra­di­tion­al­ly dri­ven by de­mand.

"Such an en­vi­ron­ment will in­crease in­vestor con­fi­dence there­by pro­vid­ing a plat­form for greater in­vest­ment in the use of ICTs, to their fullest po­ten­tial, as the coun­try pur­sues its de­vel­op­men­tal goals," the agency said in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day

By the end of the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year 2014/2015, TATT plans to have new con­sumer qual­i­ty of ser­vice stan­dards reg­u­la­tions (CQoS) out for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion. These are aimed at strength­en­ing con­sumer pro­tec­tion mech­a­nisms in the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing sec­tors and en­sur­ing users "are bet­ter pro­tect­ed and be­come in­creas­ing­ly em­pow­ered, through both tech­ni­cal and con­sumer ser­vice-ori­ent­ed bench­marks."

The reg­u­la­tions, which will be tak­en to and passed in Par­lia­ment, fo­cus on con­sumers' right of ac­cess, qual­i­ty of ser­vice, cus­tomer char­ter and re­lat­ed mat­ters, con­sumer oblig­a­tions and com­pli­ance with qual­i­ty of ser­vice stan­dards.

"New con­sumer qual­i­ty of ser­vice stan­dards reg­u­la­tions is just one of the ini­tia­tives TATT is im­ple­ment­ing to­wards sus­tain­able con­sumer pro­tec­tion with­in the con­text of its man­date," the agency said.

"While sig­nif­i­cant fo­cus is be­ing placed on con­sumer pro­tec­tion leg­is­la­tion, TATT is al­so mind­ful of the need for con­sumers to be­come self-em­pow­ered and has there­fore iden­ti­fied con­sumer ad­vo­ca­cy as one of three ma­jor ar­eas of fo­cus for this 2013/2016 Strate­gic Plan cy­cle.

"The two oth­er pil­lars that will im­pact sig­nif­i­cant­ly on con­sumers are sec­tor trans­for­ma­tion (a ma­jor com­po­nent of which is the Leg­isla­tive agen­da) and in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing to al­low TATT to be bet­ter able to en­sure reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance with­in the sec­tor.

"The con­sumer ad­vo­ca­cy ini­tia­tive com­bines a num­ber of com­po­nents in­clud­ing an ag­gres­sive con­sumer ed­u­ca­tion dri­ve aimed at en­light­en­ing con­sumers on their rights, re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and oblig­a­tions when mak­ing pur­chas­es and or con­sum­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing ser­vices."