TSTT has start­ed its trans­for­ma­tion from a tra­di­tion­al lega­cy telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny in­to an ag­ile broad­band com­mu­ni­ca­tions or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The board of di­rec­tors has ap­proved a five-year strate­gic plan that in­cludes cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture of $3.7 bil­lion to make this plan a re­al­i­ty.

The com­pa­ny will in­vest in a sig­nif­i­cant trans­for­ma­tion of its IP core, wired and wire­less in­fra­struc­ture, as well as its re­tail and cus­tomer ser­vice sup­port sys­tems as part of TSTT's over­ar­ch­ing strat­e­gy to be­come an ag­ile broad­band com­pa­ny.

In ad­di­tion, TSTT un­der­took a com­pre­hen­sive reeval­u­a­tion of all its ex­ist­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

In line with its tra­di­tion of ser­vice to T&T dat­ing back to 1960, TSTT in­tends to ful­fill what it sees as its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to prompt­ly re­spond to changes in cus­tomer needs, com­pet­i­tive fac­tors and im­por­tant in­dus­try trends.

CEO Dr Ronald Wal­cott re­it­er­at­ed that the com­pa­ny's plans were or­gan­ised around four main pil­lars.

1: Evolve and up­grade tech­nol­o­gy

De­vel­op a mo­bile net­work that sup­ports the coun­try's fastest da­ta speeds with al­most ubiq­ui­tous in­door and out­door cov­er­age through­out T&T.

At the same time, TSTT will roll out an aug­ment­ed Fiber-Cen­tric Res­i­den­tial So­lu­tion that will pass over 200,000 homes.

These so­lu­tions will be aug­ment­ed by a new Mega IP-core net­work which is scal­able to ten times its cur­rent ca­pac­i­ty and in­ter­na­tion­al band­width with a five-fold in­crease in ca­pac­i­ty. To­geth­er, these de­vel­op­ments will al­low TSTT to de­liv­er vir­tu­al­ly any con­fig­u­ra­tion of ser­vice to cus­tomers.

2: Rev­enue growth

En­able a greater than 20 per cent rev­enue growth over five years. While this will be pre­dom­i­nant­ly in broad­band, TSTT will al­so ex­plore new lines of rev­enue such as merg­ers, ac­qui­si­tions and joint ven­tures. These will com­ple­ment the dri­ve to sup­port the needs of cus­tomers.

3: Cus­tomer ser­vice

Re­tail trans­for­ma­tion will change how TSTT will serve its cus­tomers whether in-store, on­line, through call cen­tres or oth­er dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works. The com­pa­ny is in­vest­ing in a full-stack con­verged ser­vice sup­port so­lu­tion in part­ner­ship with Er­ic­s­son, a lead­ing provider of net­work and billing so­lu­tions.

TSTT is al­so cur­rent­ly de­ploy­ing a Net Pro­mot­er Score sys­tem which will en­able the com­pa­ny to get near re­al-time cus­tomer feed­back on ser­vice qual­i­ty, al­low­ing it to read­i­ly iden­ti­fy ser­vice ar­eas that are most im­por­tan­ta­nd im­prove ac­cord­ing­ly.

4: Re-align­ment

There will be an on­go­ing re­view of TSTT's busi­ness process­es, fu­ture tech­no­log­i­cal re­quire­ments, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy goals and cus­tomer needs, so that the com­pa­ny can re-align peo­ple and re­sources in the most ef­fi­cient and cost ef­fec­tive man­ner.

Dr Wal­cott not­ed that be­cause TSTT will be in­vest­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the next two years, es­pe­cial­ly in new broad­band tech­nol­o­gy, the ex­ist­ing broad­band tech­nol­o­gy had to be ful­ly re­viewed. The re­sults of the in­ter­ro­ga­tion man­dat­ed the need to ac­cel­er­ate de­pre­ci­a­tion on some as­sets and ab­sorb an im­pair­ment on oth­ers, since the as­sets in­volved faced short­ened rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing life spans and/or im­pend­ing ob­so­les­cence.

The im­pair­ment charge amount­ed to $375 mil­lion and the ac­cel­er­at­ed de­pre­ci­a­tion was $200 mil­lion. These $575 mil­lion charges erod­ed the oth­er­wise nor­mal prof­itable op­er­a­tions, re­sult­ing in an af­ter tax loss of $316 mil­lion.

Trans­for­ma­tion, he said, is al­ready on the way. Phase 1 of the Mo­bile Long-term Strat­e­gy has start­ed and has al­ready reg­is­tered sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments in net­work ca­pac­i­ty and cov­er­age. Phase 2 in­volves op­ti­mis­ing TSTT's avail­able spec­trum for im­prov­ing da­ta speeds and build­ing cov­er­age.

Fixed net­work has seen the re-en­gi­neer­ing of the In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture. Broad­band cus­tomers in scores of ar­eas with mod­ern GPON (gi­ga­bit pas­sive op­ti­cal net­work) sys­tems can get up to 25mbps of speed–a pre­cur­sor to TSTT's larg­er fi­bre roll out pro­gramme.

Through its part­ner­ship with Er­ic­s­son, a suite of ap­pli­ca­tions are be­ing cus­tomised which will ul­ti­mate­ly al­low TSTT to im­prove its speed to mar­ket, the speed and ef­fi­cien­cy of its cus­tomer in­ter­ac­tions, and al­low an 'all-in-one' bill to cus­tomers. At the same time, Er­ic­s­son's glob­al trans­for­ma­tion­al ex­per­tise will as­sist TSTT to ex­pand its ca­pac­i­ty to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment sus­tain­able and pos­i­tive change.

Cus­tomers will see ser­vices pro­vid­ed on a new, rapid­ly scal­able IP net­work that seam­less­ly in­te­grates sup­port for wired and wire­less ser­vices. In ef­fect, the in­ter­con­nect­ed na­ture of the net­work for re­silience will dra­mat­i­cal­ly im­prove ser­vice re­li­a­bil­i­ty and min­imise in­ter­rup­tions.

Cus­tomers will be able to choose the mix and char­ac­ter­is­tics of ser­vices that best suit their busi­ness, per­son­al or res­i­den­tial needs as the net­work will ful­ly sup­port in­ter alia, In­ter­net of Things (IoT) in­te­gra­tion for smart homes and con­nect­ed liv­ing.

Fur­ther, cus­tomers will en­joy a mo­bile net­work with cov­er­age and da­ta speeds that ful­ly sup­port their lifestyle needs.

Wal­cott said: "Cus­tomers will feel just­ly proud of a na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions provider that is the fu­el for eco­nom­ic growth and a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life. TSTT is ex­clu­sive­ly com­mit­ted to the long-term in­ter­ests of coun­try and cit­i­zens alike, and en­sures pre­dom­i­nant­ly lo­cal repa­tri­a­tion of the prof­itable pro­ceeds."