At the height of the car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties, PTSC and the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port gave the peo­ple of T&T yet an­oth­er rea­son to cel­e­brate and many more op­por­tu­ni­ties to con­nect. This is ac­cord­ing to Ian Galt, TSTT’s Gen­er­al Man­ag­er En­ter­prise Ser­vices, who spoke at the launch of PTSC’s free WiFi ini­tia­tive and the com­mis­sion­ing of 25 new bus­es to add to their fleet.

Galt not­ed that peo­ple now live in a dig­i­tal world where they hold their of­fice in the palms of their hands, en­ter­tain­ment cen­tres at their fin­ger­tips and do re­search and net­work with a click of a but­ton. “By out­fit­ting their fleet with free WiFi, PTSC has giv­en com­muters a tool to con­vert trav­el time in­to pro­duc­tive time and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do more while on-the-go” stat­ed Galt. He al­so in­di­cat­ed that PTSC couldn’t have se­lect­ed a bet­ter tech­nol­o­gy part­ner than TSTT to bring this to fruition. “As the tech­nol­o­gy part­ner, bmo­bile will be out­fit­ting PTSC bus­es with high speed wire­less in­ter­net that will al­low users to en­joy free in­ter­net dai­ly. As the na­tion­al provider, we com­mend PTSC on these mile­stones and their un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to en­hanc­ing the com­muter ex­pe­ri­ence in Trinidad and To­ba­go. bmo­bile is proud to walk hand-in-hand with PTSC as we make this fu­ture-ori­ent­ed, peo­ple-dri­ven ser­vice avail­able to com­muters” said Galt.

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Sen­a­tor Ro­han Sinanan shared that there are over one mil­lion cars on the lo­cal roads. “If you look at the road net­work in Trinidad and To­ba­go, that’s im­pos­si­ble to con­tin­ue. We can­not just go about buy­ing new bus­es be­cause we will be back at square one.

“This gov­ern­ment, af­ter all the stud­ies and con­sul­ta­tions, recog­nised that if we are to deal with the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion, one of the op­tions avail­able to us is to im­prove the ser­vice of the PTSC where peo­ple will feel com­fort­able to leave their cars at home and the PTSC will be the pre­ferred mode of pub­lic trans­porta­tion. The whole sys­tem at PTSC has to change and the change must be tech­nol­o­gy dri­ven. This is an­oth­er step in this di­rec­tion.”

Ed­win Good­ing, PTSC Chair­man, stat­ed that pub­lic tran­sit sys­tems are es­sen­tial ser­vices to the sus­tain­abil­i­ty, eq­ui­ty and liv­abil­i­ty of any coun­try and PTSC’s long term goal is to es­tab­lish the com­pa­ny as a world class bus com­pa­ny, cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment which is con­ducive to a pos­i­tive cul­ture of ser­vice ex­cel­lence.

“The launch of WiFi in­di­cates that PTSC is al­ways in­no­vat­ing and show­cas­ing bet­ter ser­vices to its com­muters. Mak­ing wire­less in­ter­net ac­cess avail­able on bus­es and at ter­mi­nals brings bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of work pro­duc­tiv­i­ty to what was his­tor­i­cal­ly re­gard­ed as time when you couldn’t do much more than read the pa­per.” Good­ing thanked bmo­bile for the part­ner­ship and said “We hope that you will con­tin­ue to stand by our side in this great en­deav­or of pro­mot­ing ex­cep­tion­al ser­vice to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Per­sons in at­ten­dance at the launch in­clud­ed Sen­a­tor Allyson West, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion; May­or of Port-of-Spain Joel Mar­tinez; So­nia Fran­cis-Year­wood and Claudelle McK­eller, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, re­spec­tive­ly; PTSC board mem­bers and staff; and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T and Ram­nar­ine In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices Lim­it­ed. Af­ter the of­fi­cial part of the cer­e­mo­ny, guests were treat­ed to per­for­mances by Al­i­son Hinds, Ravi B, Preedy and the First Cit­i­zens Su­per­novas Steel Or­ches­tra, as well as to com­pli­men­ta­ry re­fresh­ments and give­aways.

To log on to the free WiFi aboard PTSC bus­es, go to set­tings on your mo­bile de­vice or smart­phone, se­lect WiFi set­tings then the net­work, click ‘I Ac­cept’ to ac­cept the ser­vice terms and con­di­tions, then click ‘Con­nect’.