Last week, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T an­nounced that the Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, Has­sel Bac­chus, had ap­proved a rec­om­men­da­tion from the T&T telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions reg­u­la­tor to grant ten-year con­ces­sions to a com­pa­ny named Nep­tune Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

The con­ces­sions al­low the Bar­ba­dos-based com­pa­ny, ac­cord­ing to a no­tice pub­lished last Thurs­day, to op­er­ate a pub­lic in­ter­na­tion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work and a pub­lic do­mes­tic fixed wire­less (via satel­lite) telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work and pub­lic do­mes­tic fixed telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Sat­ur­day, the CEO and founder of Nep­tune Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Ju­lian Jor­dan, said right now the com­pa­ny is fo­cused on pro­vid­ing broad­band ser­vice, via satel­lite, to gov­ern­ment agen­cies, state en­ter­pris­es, and cor­po­rate en­ti­ties.

“The com­pa­ny was formed with a view to bring­ing re­silient con­nec­tiv­i­ty to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, gov­ern­ment, po­lice, fire, emer­gency med­ical, and oth­er ser­vices,” said Jor­dan, who added that the com­pa­ny hopes to roll out its ser­vice next month.

He ref­er­enced the ter­ror­ist at­tacks on the US on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, in which ter­ror­ists linked to the Is­lam­ic ex­trem­ist group al Qae­da—found­ed by Osama bin Laden—hi­jacked four com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger air­planes.

In the af­ter­math of those at­tacks, Jor­dan said the US passed a se­ries of laws that made clear how im­por­tant it was “for se­ri­ous and re­al at­ten­tion to be paid to this ques­tion of con­nec­tiv­i­ty for those peo­ple and agen­cies who are sup­posed to run the crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture of the coun­try. When all hell breaks loose, coun­tries need to have com­mu­ni­ca­tions plat­forms that al­low for a coun­try to re­boot it­self.”

He said 50 years ago, the post-cri­sis re­quire­ments were for pow­er, wa­ter, shel­ter and food.

“Nowa­days, you have to have con­nec­tiv­i­ty. So Nep­tune Com­mu­ni­ca­tions was formed to bring high­ly re­silient, se­cure broad­band to this part of the world,” said Jor­dan.

“We are not fo­cused on pro­vid­ing these ser­vices to house­holds just yet.”

The com­pa­ny in­tends to pro­vide two ser­vices to its clients.

“One of them is satel­lite broad­band com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices. That re­al­ly re­volves around de­liv­er­ing broad­band ac­cess and re­lat­ed IT ser­vice to our cus­tomers,” Jor­dan said.

This in­volves the com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing high-speed, re­silient or re­dun­dant con­nec­tiv­i­ty “straight out of the satel­lite in the sky” to sup­port the cor­po­rate net­works of the of­fices or busi­ness place of the cus­tomer.

He said Nep­tune Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, which is a pri­vate­ly owned com­pa­ny, has 100 per cent of T&T un­der cov­er­age at this time, “so any busi­ness or gov­ern­ment agency that cur­rent­ly does not have in­ter­net ser­vice, or has poor or un­re­li­able in­ter­net ser­vice, we can trans­form that very quick­ly.”

The sec­ond line of ser­vice pro­vid­ed by Nep­tune Com­mu­ni­ca­tions is to pro­vide gen­uine, re­dun­dant con­nec­tiv­i­ty to com­pa­nies or gov­ern­ment agen­cies that al­ready have fi­bre ac­cess to the in­ter­net.

Ju­lian said: “This is where we be­lieve there is a great deal of room for im­prove­ment. In the world of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, there is some­thing called cloud ser­vices. That de­pends en­tire­ly on very, very re­li­able con­nec­tiv­i­ty. The best-demon­strat­ed prac­tice in the out­side world is to find path di­ver­si­ty or re­dun­dant con­nec­tiv­i­ty. So that if one method of con­nect­ing to the in­ter­net fails, there is a back­up method that is en­tire­ly dis­as­so­ci­at­ed from the pri­ma­ry method of con­nect­ing to the in­ter­net. In that way, the cus­tomer can be as­sured that their cloud ser­vices will con­tin­ue to work.”

He said what Nep­tune Com­mu­ni­ca­tions has done with its satel­lite-en­abled in­ter­net ser­vice is es­tab­lish “a clear, in­de­pen­dent, se­cure ro­bust path for in­ter­net ser­vices for Trinida­di­an busi­ness and gov­ern­ment agen­cies that do not de­pend on any ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture in T&T. It is a gen­uine re­dun­dant path.”

The Nep­tune Com­mu­ni­ca­tions CEO said chief in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cers for big com­pa­nies, who are re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing that their net­works re­main on­line, no mat­ter what, have to think about busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan­ning and re­dun­dant con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

“And that is re­al­ly where we shine,” said Jor­dan.

On the is­sue of the speed of the satel­lite broad­band ser­vice, he said the through­put speeds that are avail­able by satel­lite now go up to 220 megabytes per sec­ond.

“Right now, what we are of­fer­ing, sub­ject to the busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties we have in front of us, is through­put speeds of up to 220 megabytes per sec­ond, pos­si­bly up to 350 megabytes per sec­ond, de­pend­ing on a num­ber of fac­tors to do with the site, such as the lo­ca­tion,” Jor­dan said.

He ex­plained that once a busi­ness gets above a cer­tain through­put speed, that it has ac­cess to se­cure­ly, they lit­er­al­ly can­not tell the dif­fer­ence if any more speed is added.

“It is like some­one drink­ing wa­ter from a gar­den hose, and they could not drink any faster, and some­one brought you a fire hose; that does not help you. The speeds we are pro­vid­ing are more than enough to sup­port any ma­jor cor­po­rate net­work,” Jor­dan said.

He said Nep­tune Com­mu­ni­ca­tions is not as­sur­ing 100 per cent in­ter­net avail­abil­i­ty be­cause “there is no such thing.” Typ­i­cal­ly, what the com­pa­ny pro­vides is ser­vice as­sur­ance of 99.5 per cent plus on cer­tain of its ser­vice. On oth­er ser­vices, it pro­vides a best-ef­forts ser­vice “which means you take what you get and it de­pends on the amount of traf­fic and peo­ple ac­cess­ing the ser­vice at a cer­tain time.

Cost of ser­vice

On the is­sue of the cost of the ser­vices Nep­tune Com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­vides, the com­pa­ny’s CEO said it does not have one-size-fits-all pric­ing. Some cus­tomers will re­quire small­er ca­pac­i­ty and some will need more.

“Our en­try price might be be­tween US$350 to US$400 a month, up­ward to the sky is the lim­it. That is be­cause there are in­dus­tri­al-scale satel­lite so­lu­tions that we can pro­vide that an en­tire coun­try’s needs can be rest­ed on. That would be in the tens of thou­sands per month.”

Jor­dan said the com­pa­ny will be billing its lo­cal cus­tomers in TT dol­lars, but there are go­ing to be in­stances, de­pend­ing on the na­ture of the con­tract, where cus­tomers would be billed in US dol­lars.

“That is not go­ing to stand in the way of us pur­su­ing the mar­ket ag­gres­sive­ly,” he said.

The com­pa­ny is flex­i­ble on the is­sue of equip­ment.

Some com­pa­nies or agen­cies may wish to ac­quire the equip­ment, but for most of its T&T cus­tomers, Jor­dan said Nep­tune en­vis­ages that it would re­tain own­er­ship of the equip­ment and bill the cus­tomer for the rental of the equip­ment and the ser­vice it­self.

Nep­tune is al­so flex­i­ble on the length of the con­tracts it in­tends to of­fer its T&T cus­tomers. Con­tracts will be for a min­i­mum of 12 months, but the com­pa­ny is al­so of­fer­ing 24, 36, 48 and 60-month plans.

Com­pe­ti­tion

Asked if he ex­pect­ed busi­ness­es or gov­ern­ment agen­cies to scrap their cur­rent fi­bre-en­abled ac­cess to the in­ter­net and adopt the ser­vice of­fered by Nep­tune Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Jor­dan said: “I would love that, but that would not be the right thing for me to say to any of my po­ten­tial cus­tomers. We do not in­tend to sub­sti­tute, as a pri­ma­ry in­ter­net ser­vice provider for a big cor­po­ra­tion that cur­rent­ly has a fi­bre ser­vice.

“We are in­ter­est­ed in be­ing a re­dun­dant provider. So busi­ness­es that, as they think about what their needs are, they now have a gen­uine re­dun­dan­cy op­tion, which we know the more so­phis­ti­cat­ed of them are look­ing at.”

Ques­tioned on whether Star­link, the Elon Musk-owned satel­lite provider, would pro­vide com­pe­ti­tion to his com­pa­ny, Jor­dan said: “We at Nep­tune are very ex­cit­ed that Star­link is here in the re­gion. In fact, our low-earth or­bit ser­vice will be very much based on our abil­i­ty to ac­cess Star­link’s net­work through glob­al re­sellers.

“The Star­link ser­vice is di­rect­ed pri­mar­i­ly at con­sumers. When you look at this ques­tion of US dol­lars, the Star­link mod­el is aimed at peo­ple who will go on the in­ter­net, put in their cred­it card, and get charged in US dol­lars. They then send you a kit for you to mount on your house and good luck.”