The in­ter­net is the cur­rent back­bone of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­dus­try of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

How­ev­er, one in­dus­try ex­pert has ex­pressed con­cern that a slight drop in rev­enue from fixed-line in­ter­net sub­scrip­tions could sig­nal ma­jor chal­lenges for an in­dus­try that has been in con­sis­tent de­cline across most seg­ments.

Ac­cord­ing to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT) an­nu­al re­port for 2023, the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor gen­er­at­ed $4.2 bil­lion of which the In­ter­net mar­ket gen­er­at­ed 53.6 per cent of sec­tor rev­enues, while the sec­ond largest share, 24.7 per cent, came from the mo­bile voice mar­ket.

The in­ter­net mar­ket (in­clud­ing both mo­bile and fixed ser­vices) saw an in­crease in rev­enue from $2.244 bil­lion in 2022 to $2.254 bil­lion in 2023.

How­ev­er apart from in­ter­net ser­vices, the in­dus­try large­ly saw drops in sub­scribers and rev­enue.

The re­port not­ed, “In 2023, the sub­scrip­tion-based mar­kets, that is, the mo­bile voice, fixed voice, fixed in­ter­net, mo­bile in­ter­net and sub­scrip­tion TV mar­kets, col­lec­tive­ly amassed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3.8 mil­lion sub­scrip­tions. Com­pared to 2022, this to­tal rep­re­sents a de­crease of 43,100 sub­scrip­tions, or 1.1 per cent.

In a sum­ma­ry of the da­ta in the re­port, TATT said, “With re­spect to the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing in­dus­try, there have been sig­nif­i­cant trans­for­ma­tions over the years, dri­ven by reg­u­la­to­ry shifts (the move to­wards mar­ket lib­er­al­i­sa­tion), dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and rapid tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments (from 2G to 3G, 4G LTE and 5G, the In­ter­net of Things (IoT), ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, etc.) and evolv­ing trends in con­sumer de­mand (from de­clin­ing de­mand for tra­di­tion­al voice ser­vices-on­ly to in­creas­ing de­mand for in­ter­net-based ap­pli­ca­tions). These trends are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue shap­ing the do­mes­tic in­dus­try in 2024.”

The re­port con­tin­ued, “In ad­di­tion, do­mes­tic eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, such as in­ter alia, the con­strained avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change, along­side the surge in con­sumer de­mand for high­er net­work speeds and in­creased da­ta con­sump­tion (which have been large­ly fu­elled by the pro­lif­er­a­tion of over-the-top ser­vices), have al­so in­flu­enced the mar­ket’s tra­jec­to­ry and has con­tributed to on­go­ing tar­iff in­creas­es ob­served across sev­er­al sub-mar­kets such as mo­bile voice ser­vices, In­ter­net (fixed broad­band and mo­bile da­ta), sub­scrip­tion tele­vi­sion, and bun­dled ser­vices.

“Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, op­er­a­tors, on ac­count of these evolv­ing dy­nam­ics, have pro­vid­ed ex­pand­ed ser­vice terms, in­creased speed, lim­it­ed and un­lim­it­ed da­ta plan op­tions (in both the fixed and mo­bile mar­kets), and ze­ro-rat­ed fixed voice plans, and have al­so pro­vid­ed cus­tomised ser­vices for vul­ner­a­ble con­sumer groups in­clud­ing the el­der­ly pop­u­la­tion.”

The re­port added, “Look­ing ahead, the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing in­dus­try is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue on its cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry. The de­mand for in­ter­net ser­vices is pro­ject­ed to sus­tain its up­ward mo­men­tum, as con­sumers in­crease their up­take of In­ter­net-based ap­pli­ca­tions.”

When asked about the find­ings in TATT’s re­port Bmo­bile’s act­ing CEO Kent West­ern said, “We’ve ob­served what is a glob­al trend where ris­ing mo­bile in­ter­net sub­scrip­tions are ac­com­pa­nied by de­clin­ing rev­enues, dri­ven by the shift to­wards more af­ford­able da­ta plans and the grow­ing use of over-the-top ser­vices. TATT’s re­port re­flects these evolv­ing mar­ket dy­nam­ics, as con­sumers in­creas­ing­ly seek greater val­ue.”

He con­tin­ued, “This trend un­der­scores the grow­ing de­mand for da­ta ser­vices among sub­scribers, which has in­formed TSTT’s com­mer­cial strat­e­gy over the past year. In re­sponse, we have re­mained com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing af­ford­able mo­bile in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty and de­liv­er­ing ad­di­tion­al val­ue-added ben­e­fits to meet this in­creased de­mand for da­ta. We are fo­cused on en­sur­ing that all seg­ments of our mar­ket can ac­cess and en­joy the ben­e­fits of en­hanced dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. “

West­ern said TSTT, which is a pub­licly list­ed and ma­jor­i­ty state-owned, con­tin­ued to of­fer ser­vices “to en­cour­age da­ta adop­tion among new and ex­ist­ing cus­tomers. These of­fer­ings are de­signed to show­case the ben­e­fits of in­creased con­nec­tiv­i­ty, from im­proved ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion and ser­vices to greater op­por­tu­ni­ties for eco­nom­ic and so­cial en­gage­ment.”

West­ern was pos­i­tive con­cern­ing the growth of Am­plia, TSTT’s in­ter­net and ca­ble sub­sidiary, which he not­ed added 33,000 house­holds in 2023. That was a 30 per cent in­crease in its cus­tomer base and an in­crease in rev­enue.

He said, “In 2024, Am­plia con­tin­ued to grow its reach by adding 27,000 more homes, with plans to keep ex­pand­ing its foot­print across Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

How­ev­er, ICT ex­pert Kwe­si Prescod is not so op­ti­mistic as he not­ed the in­dus­try has been in de­cline for the past decade and there were signs that in­ter­net sub­scrip­tion base in T&T is be­ing erod­ed.

TATT’s re­port stat­ed, “Fixed in­ter­net rev­enues earned in 2023 amount­ed to $1.25 bil­lion, re­flect­ing a de­crease of $3.63 mil­lion or 0.3 per cent.”

Prescod not­ed that while TATT viewed this slight de­crease as a mi­nor dip with the rev­enue ex­pect­ed to re­bound in 2024, he told the Busi­ness Guardian that with­out some reg­u­la­tion changes, in­clud­ing some from TATT it­self, the rev­enues could ac­tu­al­ly dip fur­ther.

“TATT based that off of a spot check. There’s a 0.3 per cent drop now, but I once did a trend­ing analy­sis, and it showed that it stag­nat­ed a year be­fore it start­ed slow­ly to de­cline. So the ques­tion is, why is house­hold pen­e­tra­tion drop­ping? And it’s prob­a­bly be­cause peo­ple are drop­ping off the mar­ket be­cause ei­ther prices are too ex­pen­sive or they (peo­ple) have al­ter­na­tives.”

He ex­plained that based on a dig­i­tal in­clu­sion sur­vey done by TATT, which sought to de­ter­mine why cer­tain house­holds did not have in­ter­net or a broad­band con­nec­tion, price point was a ma­jor fac­tor, but not the on­ly one.

Prescod said the cur­rent roll­out of TTWIFI, and more sig­nif­i­cant­ly the guide­lines around its us­age, may dis­cour­age some from get­ting pack­ages at home as they are aware they can ac­cess broad­band in­ter­net for free via that fa­cil­i­ty.

Prescod said the ser­vice was ini­tial­ly sup­posed to be avail­able for a fixed pe­ri­od of time of 40 min­utes, fol­low­ing which a cost would be at­tached to fur­ther us­age.

This he ex­plained would off­set costs as it is still a ser­vice be­ing pro­vid­ed by a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider. How­ev­er, Prescod said this com­mer­cial ap­proach has not been im­ple­ment­ed, de­spite it be­ing wide­ly avail­able at sev­er­al pub­lic lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing trans­porta­tion hubs, schools, li­braries and hos­pi­tals

“Which means in­ter­net is ef­fec­tive­ly free. But if you look at the TATT an­nu­al re­port, what is the on­ly sec­tor of the broad­cast­ing or tele­coms that is mak­ing mon­ey? In­ter­net! So if in­ter­net is the on­ly seg­ment mak­ing mon­ey and then you’re mak­ing us give it away for free, how would I make mon­ey? If I don’t make mon­ey. How do I pay my em­ploy­ees? How do I pay my in­vestors? How do I pay to build 5G net­works?” said Prescod, who ex­plained that this in­vari­ably leads to oth­er in­ter­net pack­ages of­fered to the pub­lic be­ing sub­ject to price in­creas­es.

In the past year, two of the coun­try’s in­ter­net ser­vice providers Dig­i­cel and Flow have in­creased their prices while al­so up­ping their min­i­mum base speed for in­ter­net pack­ages. The cheap­est in­ter­net-on­ly pack­age cur­rent­ly ad­ver­tised on both providers’ web­sites starts at $299 and the low­est speed avail­able at 200 Mb/s. Am­plia, the third largest provider in the coun­ty has the base plan at $260, with the low­est speed avail­able at 150 mb.

The on­ly broad­band in­ter­net pack­ages avail­able for $200 or less were bmo­bile’s 6mb LTE ser­vice, Air­link’s 50mb’s pack­age and Green Dot’s 3mb and 10mb pack­ages.

This was re­flect­ed in the TATT re­port which not­ed pack­ages equal to or above 100 Mb/s cat­e­go­ry were the most com­mon in­ter­net sub­scrip­tion at 71.1 per cent, while per­cent­age of sub­scrip­tions in the 30 Mb/s to less than 100 Mb/s de­creased from 18.2 per cent in 2022 to 8.6 per cent in 2023.

Slow­er pack­ages such as 2 Mb/s to less than 10 Mb/s and 10 Mb/s to less than 30 Mb/s speed tiers held shares of 9.8 per cent and 9 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly with the 256 kbit/s to less than 2 Mbit/s tier re­tained its po­si­tion of hav­ing the small­est share of the res­i­den­tial broad­band In­ter­net mar­ket, with 1.5 per cent.