Sean Nero

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie wants in­ter­net ser­vice providers to low­er their rates. He made the call at a din­ner for the 2016 Broad­band Caribbean Fo­rum host­ed by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) and the Com­mon­wealth Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CTO) at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

Cuffie, who raised the is­sue well be­fore Flow an­nounced plans this week to in­crease prices for its ser­vices, was ap­plaud­ed on­ly by one mem­ber of the au­di­ence com­prised main­ly of ex­ec­u­tives from telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies and agen­cies. He did not let that sin­gle pos­i­tive re­ac­tion to his call go un­no­ticed.

"We can­not es­cape the de­sign of his­to­ry that has placed a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty up­on each and every one of us in this room, to cre­ate a bet­ter to­mor­row for the mil­lions who live in our re­gions," the min­is­ter said.

"We could ei­ther bite the bul­let and ac­cept the chal­lenge, or pass the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the next gen­er­a­tion. The gov­ern­ment of T&T has tak­en the de­ci­sion to bite the bul­let. In­deed, as we wres­tle with the im­pli­ca­tions of a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in our rev­enues from oil and gas, we are de­ter­mined to lay the ground work to en­sure that broad­cast­ing and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions be­come one of the next en­gines of growth in the lo­cal econ­o­my."

Cuffie said the im­mi­nent launch of a Wi-Fi on bus­es pro­gramme is part of a wider pol­i­cy to in­crease the lev­el of broad­band ac­cess across the coun­try. He said Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing a free is­land-wide pub­lic broad­band wire­less net­work.

"We are con­vinced that this sin­gu­lar pol­i­cy will en­hance mean­ing­ful­ly the qual­i­ty of life en­joyed by our cit­i­zens, open­ing up vis­tas of pos­si­bil­i­ty for those with am­bi­tion and pur­pose, to re­alise dreams they once thought un­reach­able.

"One of the knock-on ef­fects of this pol­i­cy, we be­lieve, will be a re­duc­tion in in­ter­net rates. There can be no dis­put­ing the fact that an is­land-wide broad­band sys­tem will al­low ac­cess to goods and ser­vices at re­duced rates be­cause of the in­ter­net ecosys­tem is based on com­pe­ti­tion," he said.

Cuffie said the lack of af­ford­able broad­band made it hard­er for poor cit­i­zens to spend their lim­it­ed in­come more ef­fi­cient­ly, be­cause they are un­able ac­cess the com­pet­i­tive mar­ket.

In the same way the broad­cast me­dia in­dus­try was lib­er­alised by his pre­de­ces­sors to the point where more than 35 ra­dio sta­tions, sev­en tele­vi­sion sta­tions as well as dai­ly and week­ly news­pa­pers were in op­er­a­tion, he said, lib­er­al­i­sa­tion of the in­ter­net and broad­band mar­ket will rad­i­cal­ly al­ter T&T's tech­nol­o­gy land­scape.

The min­is­ter said by in­creas­ing and bring­ing mar­ket forces to bear on the in­dus­try, leg­is­la­tors could get at the heart of is­sues that his­tor­i­cal­ly un­der­mine the abil­i­ty of low in­come con­sumers to have ac­cess to ser­vices com­pa­ra­ble to what those with greater dis­pos­able in­come en­joy.

"If we agree that we are all on the same path to en­sur­ing that broad­band ac­cess is crit­i­cal to sup­port­ing life in the 21st cen­tu­ry, then I am cer­tain we can find the syn­er­gies amongst our­selves that would as­sist our gov­ern­ment in mov­ing this from a con­fer­ence theme to a bud­get­ed item," Cuffie said.