On Oc­to­ber 16, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT) opened its of­fice in To­ba­go as part of the com­pa­ny's con­tin­ued ge­o­graph­ic ex­pan­sion to in­crease its coun­try-wide pres­ence.Lo­cat­ed with­in Gulf City Mall, Low­lands, the new of­fice will en­able TATT to in­crease its lev­el of ser­vice to clients and part­ners and de­liv­er more ad­vanced and high-val­ue so­lu­tions.

More­over, the of­fice makes life much eas­i­er for peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions in To­ba­go who need to con­duct telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion busi­ness, es­pe­cial­ly those busi­ness con­sumers de­sirous of se­cur­ing con­ces­sions and li­cences who oth­er­wise would have had to jour­ney to Trinidad. Since its in­cep­tion in 2004, TATT, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), has of­fered lim­it­ed ser­vices in To­ba­go through a Help Desk. This new of­fice will bring the Au­thor­i­ty's full range of ser­vices clos­er to the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

In de­clar­ing the of­fice open, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, Raye Sandy, af­firmed the Min­istry's com­mit­ment to fur­ther build on the in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy agen­da of the peo­ple of To­ba­go and to part­ner with the THA in its ef­fec­tive de­liv­ery.

Sandy said: "It is an ex­cit­ing time to launch a new of­fice as the rapid pace of mo­bile adop­tion has de­liv­ered an ex­plo­sion of in­no­va­tion and huge eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits. Ac­cord­ing to TATT's records Trinidad and To­ba­go record­ed in 2012 ap­prox­i­mate­ly 646.7 thou­sand to­tal In­ter­net sub­scrip­tions, whilst there were a to­tal of 142 mo­bile sub­scrip­tions per 100 in­hab­i­tants. In­deed, the lo­cal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing sec­tor con­tributes ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3.3 per cent to this coun­try's gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP).

TATT's Chair­man, Sel­by Wil­son point­ed out that the Au­thor­i­ty was "ac­tive­ly ad­dress­ing sev­er­al con­cerns of To­bag­o­ni­ans; in­clud­ing that of the qual­i­ty of the free to air ra­dio and tele­vi­sion ser­vice". He ex­plained that the topog­ra­phy of To­ba­go has had an im­pact on the re­cep­tion of broad­cast­ing ser­vices and the use of mul­ti­ple trans­mit­ter sites util­is­ing fre­quen­cy re-use and di­rec­tion­al cov­er­age pat­terns may be a means of en­sur­ing that the is­land of To­ba­go is ad­e­quate­ly pro­vid­ed with broad­cast­ing ser­vices.

TATT has al­so ac­quired land from the THA to set up a spec­trum mon­i­tor­ing sta­tion. This sta­tion will mon­i­tor spec­trum use in To­ba­go and add to the mon­i­tor­ing net­work that TATT has de­signed for both Trinidad and To­ba­go. Hav­ing this site will pro­vide the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of iden­ti­fy­ing is­sues where there might be an in­ter­fer­ence of sig­nal or un­li­censed use of spec­trum.

As T&T pre­pares it­self to be an e-ready so­ci­ety a num­ber of mea­sures are be­ing pur­sued by the Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy and TATT in­clud­ing among oth­ers:

�2 Se­cur­ing of a third mo­bile tele­phone provider by mid-2014.

�2 Es­tab­lish­ment of an In­ter­net Ex­change Point which will al­low do­mes­tic In­ter­net con­tent to be rout­ed lo­cal­ly.

�2 Es­tab­lish­ment of Num­ber Porta­bil­i­ty which will en­able con­sumers to switch ser­vice providers for fixed and mo­bile ser­vices with­out chang­ing their tele­phone num­bers. This will pos­i­tive­ly change the face of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in T&T.

�2Amend­ing the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act to give more de­fin­i­tive leg­isla­tive pow­ers for TATT there­in en­hanc­ing con­sumer pro­tec­tion and im­proved mon­i­tor­ing of providers.

Al­so speak­ing at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny were Cris Seecha­ran, TATT's Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer and As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary in the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Util­i­ties of the THA Han­del Beck­les.