Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

Da­ta is rapid­ly over­tak­ing voice in glob­al con­sumer us­age, and glob­al mo­bile da­ta traf­fic dou­bled be­tween 2011 and 2012.What is dri­ving this de­mand, ac­cord­ing to le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry con­sul­tant at the Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Lisa Agard, is the pro­lif­er­a­tion of smart de­vices."We are no longer ac­cept­ing as con­sumers of hav­ing a de­vice that on­ly de­liv­ers voice ser­vices or that has lim­it­ed fea­tures," said Agard, speak­ing at the Caribbean ICT min­is­ters' fo­rum, held at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

"We want to have full da­ta and video ca­pa­bil­i­ties on all our de­vices wher­ev­er we are."In Japan, she said, 50 per cent of the av­er­age rev­enue per user (ARPU) is de­rived from mo­bile da­ta, as com­pared to a low five per cent for the Caribbean re­gion.This dis­par­i­ty presents both an op­por­tu­ni­ty and a chal­lenge for reg­u­la­tors and gov­ern­ments in the re­gion to make ef­forts to grow that de­mand.

Agard al­so gave fig­ures on glob­al mo­bile sub­scrip­tions. She said there are about 6.6 bil­lion mo­bile sub­scrip­tions world­wide and by 2018, that fig­ure is ex­pect­ed to in­crease to about 9.3 bil­lion. With the rapid growth in mo­bile da­ta in the re­gion and through­out the world, there is need to ex­pand the spec­trum for wire­less ca­pac­i­ty.

Agard was one of four mem­bers of a pan­el dis­cus­sion cen­tred around pos­si­ble mea­sures of en­hanc­ing com­pe­ti­tion in Caribbean mar­kets. Al­so on the pan­el were di­rec­tor of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Min­istry of In­for­ma­tion, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and Con­stituen­cy Em­pow­er­ment in Do­mini­ca Ben­nette Thomas and East­ern Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Em­bert Charles who de­liv­ered ad­dress­es. The pan­el was mod­er­at­ed by Bevil Wood­ing, chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer, Con­gress WBN.

An­oth­er pan­elist, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Broad­cast­ing Com­mis­sion of Ja­maica Cordel Green, said in his ad­dress that in ex­am­in­ing pos­si­ble means of en­hanc­ing com­pe­ti­tion in Caribbean mar­kets, it was im­por­tant to con­sid­er that all re­gion­al ter­ri­to­ries are not ho­moge­nous. He said there was great dis­tinc­tion in the rel­a­tive ca­pac­i­ty of en­tre­pre­neurs through­out the Caribbean to in­no­vate and im­prove tech­nol­o­gy.

"In that re­gard," he said, "Trinidad, for ex­am­ple is dif­fer­ent from Ja­maica in much the same the USA's econ­o­my dif­fers from Ger­many's."He said poli­cies must, there­fore, be rel­e­vant for spe­cif­ic en­tre­pre­neurs in their spe­cif­ic so­cioe­co­nom­ic con­text. He pro­posed that in or­der to en­hance ICT com­pet­i­tive­ness, there should in-depth ex­am­i­na­tion of cross-cut­ting poli­cies in the ar­eas of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion, broad­cast­ing and small busi­ness de­vel­op­ment.

Green said the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment for ca­ble and wire­less telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works in the Caribbean was char­ac­terised by mo­nop­o­lis­tic com­pe­ti­tion. Uni­ver­sal broad­band pen­e­tra­tion, ex­pand­ed ser­vice po­ten­tial and greater tech­nol­o­gy op­tions were among the vari­ables he cit­ed for en­hanced com­pet­i­tive­ness. He al­so said there is al­so need for de­vel­op­ment of hu­man cap­i­tal, es­pe­cial­ly in gov­ern­ment agen­cies.