KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has no doubt changed the bal­ance of how we com­mu­ni­cate, con­duct com­merce and seek en­ter­tain­ment.

But with the Gov­ern­ment re­strict­ing the coun­try’s ac­tiv­i­ty to on­ly those from es­sen­tial ser­vices, leav­ing many peo­ple at home, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pa­nies are now re­port­ing in­creased in­ter­net us­age and de­mand for ser­vices.

Over the past year, Dig­i­cel saw its over­all de­mand for in­ter­net ser­vice grow, with cus­tomers shift­ing their spend­ing on mo­bile da­ta to Dig­i­cel+ for fi­bre broad­band with­in their homes. 

When com­pared to pre-pan­dem­ic fig­ures, the de­mand for Dig­i­cel+ sub­scrip­tions has grown by 30 per cent.

“This is a trend that start­ed one year ago. How­ev­er, since May 3, we have not seen any ma­jor shifts in par­tic­u­lar,” Dig­i­cel gen­er­al man­ag­er Navin Balkissoon told Guardian Me­dia.

“Where we have seen a ma­jor shift, though, is for WiFi cov­er­age with­in the home and we have ex­pe­ri­enced a 20 per cent in­creased de­mand, month over month, for our Smart WiFi so­lu­tion.”

Mean­while, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vice of T&T (TSTT), which op­er­ates bmo­bile and Am­plia, re­ports that with peo­ple pre­dom­i­nant­ly home, it saw an in­crease in de­mand for con­nec­tiv­i­ty in the house­hold. And as more peo­ple re­ly on con­nec­tiv­i­ty through WiFi, there was an ex­pect­ed de­cline in mo­bile rev­enues for the pe­ri­od. 

“It is worth not­ing that we had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence around this time last year,” TSTT said in a state­ment. 

Flow Trinidad pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed in­creased de­mand for ser­vices since the pan­dem­ic forced Work From Home and on­line school­ing. On Fri­day, it re­port­ed that in the past year, there was a con­sis­tent in­crease in the de­mand for con­nec­tiv­i­ty across the coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties where it es­tab­lished new con­nec­tions.

“In the past month, this de­mand has been con­sis­tent with pri­or months. Our cus­tomers, how­ev­er, have been in­creas­ing their de­mand for high­er speeds through up­grades of their pack­ages,” the com­pa­ny said.

Flow Trinidad saw a 17 per cent in­crease in in­ter­net us­age from May 3 when most re­tail busi­ness­es, schools and ser­vices closed.

For the same pe­ri­od, TSTT al­so saw a marked in­crease in in­ter­net us­age. The State-owned provider not­ed that the high us­age cur­rent­ly seen in the day ex­ceeds the con­sump­tion peaks that were seen at night be­fore the May 3 lock­down. Nor­mal­ly, the peak oc­curs at night and the con­sump­tion drops dur­ing the day.

“This change in con­sump­tion pat­tern ap­pears to be in line with the gen­er­al ex­pec­ta­tion of cit­i­zens com­ply­ing with the cur­rent re­stric­tions. When look­ing at the sta­tis­tics, we can ad­vise that in­ter­net us­age has rock­et­ed up­wards by 40 per cent and lev­elled off at the high­er traf­fic lev­els.”

These traf­fic lev­els iden­ti­fied are high­er than those record­ed in pre­vi­ous years dur­ing the hol­i­day pe­ri­ods when chil­dren were home, en­gag­ing in on­line ac­tiv­i­ties.

Dig­i­cel con­tin­ues to see a steady growth of traf­fic from last year, as more peo­ple get com­fort­able on­line.

Chan­dri­ka Sama­roo, Dig­i­cel’s op­er­a­tions di­rec­tor, not­ed that while few­er peo­ple were now us­ing mo­bile da­ta dai­ly, the ones who do were us­ing the full gen­er­ous da­ta al­lowances that come with Prime Bun­dles.

Sama­roo said the traf­fic growth is pri­mar­i­ly seen on video con­sump­tion and stream­ing ser­vices like YouTube, Face­book, Net­flix and What­sApp calls. 

With the in­crease in traf­fic, one can as­sume an over­bur­den­ing of sys­tems.

How­ev­er, Sama­roo said Dig­i­cel’s over­all net­work is high ca­pac­i­ty and scal­able. Dig­i­cel op­er­ates a pure fi­bre net­work that is high­ly scal­able.

“We are di­men­sioned to han­dle the traf­fic in­creas­es with­out any con­ges­tion to the cus­tomer but have al­ready in­vest­ed in ex­pan­sions sched­uled over the next quar­ter in an­tic­i­pa­tion that this ac­cel­er­at­ed growth con­tin­ues,” Sama­roo said.

Re­gard­ing Dig­i­cel’s mo­bile net­work, Sama­roo said the com­pa­ny is ex­plor­ing mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures in light of the in­creas­ing us­age. While its net­work core is ca­pa­ble of han­dling the in­com­ing vol­umes, there is some con­ges­tion on the ra­dio net­works. 

Sama­roo said the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) pro­vid­ed some tem­po­rary spec­trum to help al­le­vi­ate the sit­u­a­tion. The com­pa­ny still re­quires an ad­di­tion­al tem­po­rary spec­trum. How­ev­er, the long-term so­lu­tion de­mands a more per­ma­nent al­lo­ca­tion, which Dig­i­cel has al­ready re­quest­ed from TATT. 

“Adding this spec­trum will re­quire some in­vest­ment but Dig­i­cel is will­ing to do our part to keep the qual­i­ty of ser­vice at an ac­cept­able stan­dard.” 

TSTT mean­while says it con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor and op­ti­mise its net­work, adding that it built its net­work to al­low for seam­less ca­pac­i­ty in­crease. As part of its busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plans, the com­pa­ny de­vel­oped in­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing the sub­sea ca­pac­i­ty ex­pan­sions to re­spond op­ti­mal­ly in times of cri­sis. The com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly has 75 Gbps of ca­pac­i­ty on all sub-sea sys­tems.

“As homes have be­come our new of­fices, class­rooms and en­ter­tain­ment hubs, so we un­der­stand that now more than ever, con­nec­tiv­i­ty is crit­i­cal. As such, our teams have been even more vig­i­lant and re­spon­sive to is­sues, no mat­ter how small, to en­sure that we have near 100 per cent up-time,” TSTT said.

Flow Trinidad said it had im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures for Trinidad and across Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions as a strat­e­gy since 2020 when COVID-19 re­stric­tions came in­to ef­fect. 

“The good thing about be­ing part of such a large or­gan­i­sa­tion is that we can mod­el and see growth trends in oth­er coun­tries who may have ex­pe­ri­enced lock­downs be­fore us and plan ac­cord­ing­ly. So, the net­work was ready for any in­crease in traf­fic. In re­sponse to cus­tomers’ in­creas­ing de­mands at home, we have been do­ing a se­ries of up­grades through­out the net­work, which is con­tin­u­ous and on­go­ing,” Flow Trinidad ex­plained.