Nadaleen Singh

A third mo­bile provider is com­ing and could be award­ed its li­cence as ear­ly as Sep­tem­ber, 2016.

That's the con­fir­ma­tion from Gilbert Pe­tersen, chair­man of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) who ad­mit­ted that the Re­quest for Pro­pos­als invit­ing com­pa­nies to sub­mit bids for the li­cence had been pend­ing for too long. Ac­cord­ing to TATT's web­site, the Re­quest For Pro­pos­als was first sent in 2013.

In a mid-De­cem­ber 2015 in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, chair­man of TSTT Emile Eliassig­nalled that TSTT should be one of the com­pa­nies award­ed that third li­cense. Both Dig­i­cel and Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions had been short­list­ed by TATT to re­ceive the two 4G-LTE li­cences.

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian at Day One of the Broad­band Caribbean Fo­rum 2016 which was held at the Hy­att ho­tel, Dock Road, Port-of-Spain, Pe­tersen said: "That is some­thing that we are present­ly look­ing at, and some­thing that we ex­pect to go pub­lic on, and have it wrapped up in the short­est pos­si­ble time."

Asked whether he had a de­fin­i­tive date for the award of the 4G-LTE li­cense, he said: "No, but it would be in short­est pos­si­ble time, that's my aim be­cause it has been out­stand­ing for awhile. That process has been on­go­ing for two years, that is some­thing that I have been aim­ing at to bring to some con­clu­sion. I am hop­ing to see the back of that (the con­clu­sion) by Sep­tem­ber."

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of the dead­line for achiev­ing num­ber porta­bil­i­ty, Pe­tersen said the au­thor­i­ty may not be able to meet the sug­gest­ed Au­gust dead­line as test­ing is still con­tin­u­ing by the two main tele­com providers.

He said: "It is one dead­line date we would not make be­cause in terms of the co­or­di­na­tion be­tween the providers, to have every­thing ready for that num­ber porta­bil­i­ty which is re­al­ly a pro­gres­sive way for­ward. We an­tic­i­pate to do so with­in this year, and we in­tend to in­form the pub­lic about a new date to achiev­ing num­ber porta­bil­i­ty."

He ex­plained that num­ber porta­bil­i­ty was de­layed pre­vi­ous­ly be­cause the providers were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing "tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ty."

Num­ber porta­bil­i­ty, he said, is not a uni­lat­er­al process but it in­volves sev­er­al providers, and there­fore, "the lo­gis­tics of co­or­di­nat­ing that and hav­ing every­body ready at the same time, is in fact the chal­lenge. It is some­thing we are look­ing for­ward to achiev­ing be­fore the end of the year."

Num­ber porta­bil­i­ty is the abil­i­ty to change your ser­vice provider with­out chang­ing your num­ber.

Ac­cord­ing to no­tice pub­lished in the news­pa­pers this week, TATT said: "Mo­bile ser­vice providers have not com­plet­ed their in­ter-op­er­a­tor and oth­er test­ing in keep­ing with their re­vised im­ple­men­ta­tion date no­ti­fied to the Au­thor­i­ty of Ju­ly 1st 2016." Through­out Au­gust there would be test­ing con­duct­ed by the providers.