Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider, TSTT, yes­ter­day launched a 4G LTE mo­bile broad­band ser­vice in T&T, even as its chair­man, Emile Elias, crit­i­cised the sec­tor's reg­u­la­tor for not mak­ing the spec­trum for 4G LTE avail­able to the com­pa­ny.

In speak­ing about the new tech­nol­o­gy, com­pa­ny of­fi­cials em­pha­sized that TSTT is the first com­pa­ny in the coun­try to pro­vide the ser­vice, which de­liv­ers en­hanced speeds for mo­bile da­ta.

Ad­dress­ing a news con­fer­ence at TSTT's head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain, the com­pa­ny's CEO Ronald Wal­cott said: "Our cus­tomers can now ex­pe­ri­ence ul­tra-fast broad­band speeds on their mo­bile de­vices, with speeds that are as much as ten times faster than you can get from any­where else in Trinidad and To­ba­go right now. Our 4G LTE Mo­bile ser­vice is at world­wide stan­dards."

Last week Fri­day, in com­mem­o­rat­ing the first an­niver­sary of the board's stew­ard­ship, TSTT out­lined a $1.9 bil­lion fi­nanc­ing agree­ment with Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed to sup­port its $3.7 bil­lion, five-year in­vest­ment and trans­for­ma­tion plan and the launch of the new con­verged bmo­bile brand.

Wal­cott said yes­ter­day: "I would like to re­mind every­one that we have had the on­ly 4G LTE Wire­less Broad­band ser­vice through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go for quite some time. That is fixed 4G LTE broad­band for your homes and of­fices. What we are bring­ing to you to­day is a brand new mo­bile ex­pe­ri­ence to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go: Mo­bile 4G LTE for your mo­bile de­vices."

He con­tin­ued, "We in­vite you to go to our bmo­bile re­tail stores and dis­tri­b­u­tion out­lets to­day and sign up to en­joy this pow­er­ful new so­lu­tion. All you need is a LTE com­pat­i­ble SIM card and mo­bile de­vice and with our new 4G LTE Mo­bile ser­vice, you will be able to do every­thing that you are ac­cus­tomed to at much faster speeds."

4G means the fourth and lat­est gen­er­a­tion of da­ta tech­nol­o­gy for cel­lu­lar net­works. LTE, which stands for "Long Term Evo­lu­tion," is the fastest 4G tech­nol­o­gy avail­able to­day for the trans­mis­sion of da­ta on mo­bile de­vices and is the go-to so­lu­tion for peo­ple with smart­phones, tablets and lap­tops who need very fast da­ta speeds for Web brows­ing, app use and email when they're on the move and out of the range of their Wi-Fi net­works.

Wal­cott said that TSTT was us­ing its ex­ist­ing 1900 MHz spec­trum to pro­vide the 4G LTE ser­vice. This would al­low the com­pa­ny to de­ploy the ser­vice in Port of Spain, San Fer­nan­do, Scar­bor­ough and their en­vi­rons in phase 1 of the project.

For TSTT to pro­vide na­tion­al cov­er­age it would need to get the 700 MHz spec­trum that they ap­plied for in 2014, Wal­cott said, adding: "I want to re­it­er­ate that it is our ex­pec­ta­tion that we will be able to con­tin­ue to roll out our 4G LTE Mo­bile ser­vice in the 700 MHz band which is the most stan­dard spec­trum for the LTE de­ploy­ment be­cause of its prop­a­gat­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics which in­cludes the abil­i­ty to have the type of ge­o­graph­ic cov­er­age that we want. This will en­sure that we can pro­vide this so­lu­tion through­out the length and breadth of T&T so that every­one can be a part of this mod­ern and ex­cit­ing era."

Speak­ing af­ter Wal­cott, TSTT chair­man Elias said he had mes­sage for T&T "and for those who have been con­spir­ing TSTT."

His mes­sage was: "TSTT is Trinidad and To­ba­go and Trinidad and To­ba­go is TSTT."

Elias said TSTT has a plan, which is work­ing "and any­body who stands in the way of that hap­pen­ing is go­ing to come up against the very res­olute board and man­age­ment of TSTT."

The com­pa­ny's chair­man said TSTT has de­mand­ed the 700 MHz spec­trum from its reg­u­la­tor, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T and TSTT is con­tem­plat­ing le­gal ac­tion against TATT, if nec­es­sary, to en­sure that the com­pa­ny gets the al­lo­ca­tion of spec­trum.

He said three years ago el­e­ments of the pre­vi­ous boards of TATT and Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd, which holds 51 per cent of TSTT for the gov­ern­ment, "were in­volved in what I con­sid­er to be a con­spir­a­cy to dam­age TSTT. Who­ev­er the cap fits let them wear it. And if they get me damned vexed I might start nam­ing names."