Mark Lyn­der­say

Lat­er that night, with sur­pris­ing swag­ger be­fore an au­di­ence that gen­er­al­ly and trag­i­cal­ly ig­nored his short speech–the price of ad­mis­sion for the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny's an­nu­al me­dia Christ­mas par­ty–Dr Wal­cott would am­pli­fy those sen­ti­ments.

"I am de­clar­ing here," he told the small knot of peo­ple around him pay­ing at­ten­tion to his talk, "that we rule this space, and any­one else in the busi­ness should take heed."

TSTT has killed off the ill-ad­vised Blink brand (did they re­alise what on the blink means?) in favour of its much bet­ter known bmo­bile iden­ti­ty for cus­tomer ser­vices.

The telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny will op­er­ate as a cor­po­rate en­ti­ty known as TSTT, but all its cus­tomer fac­ing ser­vices will now be brand­ed with a new, flat de­sign "b" lo­go which takes its in­spi­ra­tion from the graph­ic for the Bing search ser­vice but is a pa­per clip all its own.

At the morn­ing me­dia press con­fer­ence, a silent, dark-suit­ed squad from Re­pub­lic Bank ac­com­pa­nied the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Nigel Bap­tiste, but Mr Bap­tiste no­tably did not join the pan­el ad­dress­ing the me­dia con­tin­gent nor did he speak at the for­mal event, sign­ing the pa­per­work with a pro­fes­sion­al smile and ac­cept­ing a glass or­na­men­tal me­men­to of the fi­nan­cial deal.

TSTT's board has ap­proved a $3.7 bil­lion in­fra­struc­ture and ser­vices im­prove­ment plan (http://ow.ly/PN­Wl306M5Pz) that is de­signed to make the com­pa­ny more com­pet­i­tive.

"TSTT and CAL are the two state agen­cies that op­er­ate pub­lic ser­vices that face in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion with­out any bar­ri­ers of pro­tec­tion," said TSTT chair­man Emile Elias.

Elias not­ed that he had al­ready told TATT to get a bush bath (he warns TATT about gru-gru bef thorns here - http://ow.ly/fX9l306M687) when the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions over­sight agency did not re­new TSTT's li­cense.

"I can't tell you what I did, but we did get the li­cense."

The TSTT chair­man wasn't done with his sig­na­ture straight talk ei­ther.

"If I find that state agen­cies are giv­ing busi­ness to some­one else and not to us, there will be con­se­quences. Be­cause you are breach­ing the man­u­al of pub­lic sec­tor gov­er­nance."

Dr Wal­cott not­ed that the com­pa­ny had spent $900 mil­lion as cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture on the project to date out of cur­rent cash flow. The bal­ance of the bud­get for in­fra­struc­ture im­prove­ment will come out of fu­ture cash flow over the five-year pro­gramme's life.

TSTT is al­so quite cheer­ful about an­nounce­ments it has sched­uled for lat­er this week. It is ex­pect­ed to an­nounce favourable half-year fi­nan­cial re­sults and an over­due re­vamp of its mo­bile pack­age of­fer­ings, which it has been hint­ing about quite broad­ly at for months (http://ow.ly/cgad306M6W3).

The telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny has made the four pil­lars of its im­prove­ment pro­gramme pub­lic since Ju­ly. It will evolve and up­grade its tech­nol­o­gy, pur­sue greater than 20 per cent rev­enue growth, trans­form its cus­tomer ser­vice and re­align its busi­ness process­es.

Dr Wal­cott should be warned that the past is pro­logue.

TSTT's his­to­ry of tech­nol­o­gy im­ple­men­ta­tion over the last ten years hasn't been in­spir­ing. The com­pa­ny stuck with Edge da­ta tech­nol­o­gy too long and al­lowed ri­val Dig­i­cel to take a nine-month lead on them in the in­tro­duc­tion of 4G tech­nol­o­gy. It prob­a­bly didn't help that vir­tu­al­ly the en­tire board at the time was tech­nol­o­gy il­lit­er­ate.

The com­pa­ny did a cost­ly and ex­ten­sive up­grade to WiMax just as the tech­nol­o­gy was be­com­ing ob­so­lete and when it fi­nal­ly im­ple­ment­ed 4G, it was a ver­sion that sat on the bor­der­line of 3G dataspeeds.

CTIO Roger Richards of­fered a pained smile at my re­count­ing of these dam­ag­ing mis­steps, but ar­gued that the com­pa­ny's cur­rent plans will re­place age­ing GSM tech­nol­o­gy with mod­ern UMTS (Uni­ver­sal Mo­bile Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Sys­tem) based hard­ware, mod­ernising ex­ist­ing sys­tems to com­pli­ance with the new­er pro­to­col. The com­pa­ny has al­ready be­gun of­fer­ing hand­some trade-ins for old­er phones that are in­com­pat­i­ble with UMTS.

"Wher­ev­er it is too old, we are do­ing blank slate in­stal­la­tions with the in­ten­tion of im­ple­ment­ing an LTE wire­less broad­band prod­uct that is a mar­ket leader in the Caribbean," Richards said, "one with par­i­ty with any­thing avail­able in the first world.

"These are not snap-your-fin­ger so­lu­tions, but we are com­mit­ted to cus­tomers in T&T feel­ing the im­pact of our in­vest­ments as soon as pos­si­ble."

The com­pa­ny has al­ready im­ple­ment­ed HD voice tech­nol­o­gy on its net­work.

Dr Wal­cott ac­knowl­edged the pe­cu­liar­i­ties of TSTT's staff pro­file, which is over­staffed in sup­port of age­ing sys­tems and tech­nolo­gies and un­der­manned in in­no­va­tion and new im­ple­men­ta­tion projects

"As with the lega­cy sys­tems, there is a skills gap," he said.

"We are deal­ing with it through dis­cus­sions with the union, re­train­ing and re­struc­tur­ing and I would de­scribe that process as 50 per cent com­plete."

TSTT is fol­low­ing the Muham­mad Ali play­book close­ly. Train­ing hard for a year, talk­ing big and bold on the verge of en­ter­ing the ring again and by the end of this week, when TSTT ful­ly throws off its robes, it will be much clear­er which fight we're go­ing to see, the Fight of the Cen­tu­ry–which Ali lost af­ter tak­ing a ter­ri­ble beat­ing from Joe Fra­zier or the Rum­ble in the Jun­gle–which Ali won af­ter be­ing bat­tered fierce­ly by George Fore­man.