Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the Gov­ern­ment will be invit­ing pro­pos­als for a third mo­bile op­er­a­tor be­fore the end of the year.She said it was in keep­ing with the Gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy to deep­en the com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment.Bmo­bile, the mo­bile di­vi­sion of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) and its ri­val Dig­i­cel are the on­ly two cel­lu­lar ser­vice providers on the mar­ket to date.In May 2008, TSTT and Dig­i­cel signed an in­ter­con­nec­tion agree­ment af­ter months of wran­gling.The two com­pa­nies al­so agreed to share space on each oth­er's cel­lu­lar tow­ers.Per­sad-Bisses­sar was the guest of ho­n­our at the open­ing of the Com­mon­wealth Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Or­gan­i­sa­tion's (CTO) ninth fo­rum held at the Grand Ball­room, Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on Mon­day.The fo­rum ends to­day.The theme was Broad­band for the Net­worked So­ci­ety.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said through TSTT's line min­istry, the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, the Gov­ern­ment had man­dat­ed the ex­pan­sion and de­vel­op­ment of broad­band to en­sure that cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es could get the most from a po­ten­tial­ly lim­it­less ap­pli­ca­tion which in­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) af­ford­ed. She said T&T was seek­ing to lever­age the pow­er of ICT and max­imise its po­ten­tial to­wards the so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and to en­hance com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said con­cur­rent with those ini­tia­tives, the Gov­ern­ment was ac­tive­ly in­volved in a re­view of the leg­isla­tive frame­work, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the con­ver­sion phe­nom­e­na of tech­nolo­gies and ser­vices which opened up new de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.She said the ini­tia­tives would not on­ly im­prove the com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment but would cre­ate a new op­por­tu­ni­ty for dif­fer­ent kinds of busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal con­tent."In keep­ing with our pol­i­cy to deep­en the com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment, we will be invit­ing pro­pos­als for a third mo­bile op­er­a­tor be­fore the end of this year," she said."TSTT, I'm sor­ry...Dig­i­cel...but com­pe­ti­tion is good and strong."She re­called her days at uni­ver­si­ty when she used a main­frame com­put­er with punch cards and sub­se­quent­ly got a Com­modore 64 com­put­er which was in­tro­duced in 1982."Look how far we've come in this age of tech­nol­o­gy," she said.Chair­man of the Mau­ri­tius Tele­com, Dass Thomas; chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the CTO Dr Ek­wow Spio-Gar­brah of Ghana and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Em­manuel George al­so de­liv­ered re­marks.