Bmo­bile yes­ter­day an­nounced the launch of its new Lo­cal Off­shore Da­ta Roam­ing Plan and its Mar­itime Plan, two mo­bile of­fer­ings de­signed to pro­vide con­tin­ued con­nec­tiv­i­ty to peo­ple and busi­ness­es in­volved in off­shore and mar­itime ac­tiv­i­ty.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, bmo­bile said the new plans, which give ac­cess to 10 GB of roam­ing da­ta, will pro­vide cus­tomers with re­li­able, con­ve­nient and se­cure ac­cess to their da­ta ser­vices and mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tions while at sea.

The Lo­cal Off­shore Da­ta Roam­ing Plan (for cor­po­rate cus­tomers) and the Mar­itime Plan (for non-cor­po­rate cus­tomers) will sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hance the ef­fi­cien­cy of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for com­pa­nies and per­sons en­gaged in the off­shore en­er­gy sec­tor while al­so im­prov­ing the liveli­hood, safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of fish­er­men in the off­shore roam­ing zones, said the mo­bile com­pa­ny.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the plans are po­si­tioned to ben­e­fit recre­ation­al ves­sels and can serve as one more lev­el of safe­ty for those in the wa­ters around T&T, bmo­bile said.

TSTT’s as­sis­tant gen­er­al man­ag­er of busi­ness sales, Dar­ryl Duke, said the two plans are es­sen­tial com­po­nents in the com­pa­ny’s con­tin­ued sup­port of the coun­try.

“Sup­port­ing the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is in the very DNA of what we do here at bmo­bile. Con­nec­tiv­i­ty is the lifeblood of any mod­ern or­gan­i­sa­tion and we saw a need to fill the gap in com­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­pe­ri­enced by the mar­itime in­dus­tries,” Duke ex­plained. “We part­nered with a leader in off­shore roam­ing to en­able this and ex­pand our port­fo­lio. This il­lus­trates the be­lief and ef­forts we will un­der­take as a com­mu­ni­ca­tions leader to keep T&T pow­ered and pow­er­ing on!” Duke said.

To ac­cess the plan, cor­po­rate cus­tomers are re­quired to con­tact their ac­count man­agers, while non-cor­po­rate cus­tomers in­clud­ing fish­er­men and those who ven­ture out to sea for work or recre­ation can ac­ti­vate the plan by di­al­ing *123# and se­lect­ing the op­tion for Mar­itime Add-Ons. Once ac­ti­vat­ed, cus­tomers will re­ceive a no­ti­fi­ca­tion on the pur­chase of the add-on and no­ti­fi­ca­tions at 75 per cent, 90 per cent and 100 per cent us­age of the da­ta bun­dle.

While the cur­rent plans are da­ta-on­ly, bmo­bile will seek to add Voice func­tion­al­i­ty soon. The Mar­itime plan is avail­able to new and ex­ist­ing post­paid and pre­paid cus­tomers and must be ac­ti­vat­ed be­fore go­ing off­shore or to sea.

“The Lo­cal Off­shore Da­ta Roam­ing Plan and the Mar­itime Plan from bmo­bile give you cov­er­age in some of the most far-reach­ing ar­eas in the wa­ters around T&T,” said An­ton Ro­many, se­nior man­ag­er of ma­jor ac­counts at TSTT.

“Whether you’re a fish­er­man, a pas­sen­ger on a sea-far­ing ves­sel, or an em­ploy­ee on an off­shore rig, you can now re­ly on bmo­bile to keep you con­nect­ed. If for in­stance you are strand­ed at sea, you are now able to make a call us­ing any over-the-Top (OTT) ap­pli­ca­tion (eg, What­sApp, Telegram, Face­Time) from three ma­jor zones, which in some ar­eas is as far as 40 miles off­shore.”

He not­ed that cov­er­age spans from the vicin­i­ty of the Poin­set­tia oil­field in the north, and the Cas­sia B and Ma­hogany B oil­fields in the south-east. Cov­er­age in the vicin­i­ty of the An­gelin field is in the works.