Mark Lyn­der­say

It must have been an an­noy­ance for the me­dia, and their at­ten­dance flagged at the sec­ond event last week, but con­flat­ing a busi­ness deal that TSTT CEO Dr Ronald Wal­cott de­scribed as "the largest com­mer­cial pa­per ever done in T&T" with the launch of a long await­ed up­grade to mo­bile broad­band was sure to dim at­ten­tion for one or the oth­er to the com­pa­ny's re­gret.

So 11 days ago, the source of the back­bone of the com­pa­ny's big spend on in­fra­struc­ture and sys­tems was top of the agen­da. Four days ago, a big bump from a ceil­ing of around sev­en megabits on its mo­bile net­work to a cur­rent top speed of 66 megabits was the soli­tary news item of­fered by the com­pa­ny.

Most of the ap­plause for the new speed of­fer­ings came from the green or white clad TSTT team mem­bers in at­ten­dance. Ping la­ten­cy in the low teens, a boost in speed by a fac­tor of ten and a com­men­su­rate rise in up­load speeds isn't the sort of thing that most peo­ple, even me­dia vet­er­ans, leave their seats to wave a ju­bi­lant flag for.

Un­til, of course, it's trans­lat­ed in­to prac­ti­cal terms. Af­ter re­ceiv­ing a test tri­al of the new sys­tem, which re­quires a new SIM card, a com­pat­i­ble phone (iPhones are still to be brought in­to the new sys­tem) and a dent of just al­most $700 as your first in­stall­ment, things seem to wake up on a smart­phone.

I si­lenced my phone six years ago, so it vi­brates when no­ti­fi­ca­tions come in. Sud­den­ly, my pock­et seemed to be alive with ac­tiv­i­ty, as e-mails, Face­book sta­tus up­dates and Twit­ter mes­sages gave me the un­com­fort­able feel­ing that ants had tak­en res­i­dence in my pants pock­et.

TSTT isn't new to Long Term Evo­lu­tion (LTE) 4G tech­nolo­gies, hav­ing im­ple­ment­ed a fixed wire­less LTE so­lu­tion for don­gles and pri­vate hotspots, but its en­try in­to the mo­bile ver­sion of the tech­nol­o­gy has been de­layed by the de­ci­sion by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty (TATT) not to as­sign 700mhz spec­trum to any cur­rent play­ers in the field.

Ri­val Dig­i­cel, who have launched LTE in Ja­maica, have been wait­ing for years for the spec­trum to in­tro­duce the ser­vice on in­stalled in­fra­struc­ture in T&T as well.

Chair­man Emile Elias was not hap­py about the sit­u­a­tion and of­fered "a mes­sage for those who have been con­spir­ing to dam­age TSTT."

Af­ter claim­ing that TATT has un­nec­es­sar­i­ly tied ac­cess to the 700mhz spec­trum to the ap­point­ment of a third tele­pho­ny provider, he threw down a chal­lenge to Cab­i­net and Dr Row­ley to deal with the mat­ter, threat­ened le­gal ac­tion against the au­thor­i­ty by the Board of TSTT and was moved to ex­press his an­noy­ance in ca­lyp­so, singing, in part, "if they touch TSTT, they touch­ing all ah we." So with­out the spec­trum al­lo­ca­tion, how did TSTT de­liv­er an LTE mo­bile so­lu­tion? It was, said the com­pa­ny's CTIO Roger Richards, "a big shoe­horn."

With a man­date from the board and man­age­ment to make it hap­pen, Richards and his team be­gan to work on the prob­lem in Oc­to­ber.

"We were de­ter­mined to turn around a bad sit­u­a­tion," he said.

"Af­ter the CEO set the char­ter, I got to­geth­er with the team here. I don't know why peo­ple don't think we don't have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to do this. We lever­aged our part­ners, specif­i­cal­ly Huawei to make this hap­pen." What TSTT did was to retro­fit equip­ment used for GSM to car­ry LTE, op­ti­mis­ing the soft­ware, equip­ment and pack­et core to fer­ry the sig­nals along.

"We al­so need­ed to do it right, to do it first world. I don't think any of us have had any prop­er sleep since we start­ed work­ing on this."

"We need­ed to do this, be­cause T&T needs this. The di­rec­tive was to make this hap­pen be­fore Christ­mas, it would be a gift for the na­tion."

The ser­vice is ac­tive, but very much in the ear­ly adopter stage.

TSTT cur­rent­ly of­fers LTE ser­vice in Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do and at six sites in To­ba­go, pri­mar­i­ly in the south of the is­land.

Ser­vice can be dis­tinct­ly spot­ty. In St James alone, on one block there's ac­cept­able ser­vice of 36Mbps, but walk two blocks south and you're sud­den­ly dropped back to lega­cy 4G speeds of around 8Mbps.

The com­pa­ny hopes to have 85 per cent cov­er­age in T&T over the next few months, but a lot of that de­pends on whether ac­cess to the 700mhz band is grant­ed.

"We launched in 25 per cent more places than we ex­pect­ed," Richards said, "and there is a con­tin­u­ous pro­gramme of ex­pan­sion planned."

"There are no spe­cif­ic tech­nol­o­gy lim­i­ta­tions that would stop us from get­ting to all the places we want to, but there are op­er­a­tional is­sues as well as eco­nom­ic is­sues that gov­ern how it's be­ing de­ployed."

The 700mhz spec­trum makes bet­ter use of the trans­mis­sion equip­ment, so it takes more trans­mis­sion points in the ex­ist­ing 1900mhz spec­trum to cov­er an equiv­a­lent area.

"The 700mhz spec­trum gives you more bang for the buck," Richards said. "Work­ing in the 1900mhz spec­trum calls for more sites, more in­fra­struc­ture, more de­ploy­ment of hard­ware."

"On sev­er­al lev­els, it makes more sense to use the 700mhz spec­trum. To pro­mote com­pe­ti­tion for the ben­e­fit of the coun­try, let play­ers com­pete in the 700 space."

Ac­cord­ing to Richards, ac­cess to the pre­ferred spec­trum would speed up de­ploy­ment of LTE by at least 30 per cent for the com­pa­ny and al­low it to cov­er most of Trinidad and al­most all of To­ba­go.

With num­ber porta­bil­i­ty now a re­al­i­ty in T&T, TSTT need­ed to notch a de­ci­sive ar­row against ri­val Dig­i­cel, who have been ag­gres­sive­ly court­ing users who were fonder of their num­bers than their provider.

Even with dis­tinct­ly spot­ty cov­er­age at launch, 4GLTE is a promise of bet­ter to come from a com­pa­ny that's bad­ly in need of a pro­file that's char­ac­terised by not just raw speed, but al­so re­ju­ve­na­tion and rel­e­vance.

TSTT is of­fer­ing ac­cess to LTE with a sin­gle of­fer­ing, Every­thing LTE Pre­mi­um (http://ow.ly/afmb3070DWP), at TT$673.88 af­ter VAT with un­lim­it­ed lo­cal calls and text mes­sages and a cap of 20GB of da­ta use. Oth­er plans are ex­pect­ed in Jan­u­ary, 2017.

What TSTT did was to retro­fit equip­ment used for GSM to car­ry LTE, op­ti­mis­ing the soft­ware, equip­ment and pack­et core to fer­ry the sig­nals along.