Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go cor­re­spon­dent

Chair­man of the To­ba­go arm of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Cur­tis Williams, is call­ing for mea­sures to be put in place to pre­vent the re­cur­rence of Tues­day’s in­ci­dent in which a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions out­age caused the is­land to be com­plete­ly cut off.

A bush fire in To­co at around 4 pm on Tues­day re­sult­ed in the fi­bre-op­tic link be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad to be bro­ken for eight hours.

This caused a dis­rup­tion of the is­land’s mo­bile tele­phone, in­ter­net and ca­ble use as well as com­mer­cial trans­ac­tions in­volv­ing deb­it or cred­it cards and the with­draw­al of cash from bank ma­chines. Al­so de­grad­ed was the is­land’s emer­gency man­age­ment ser­vice.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Williams de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions dis­as­ter.

He said the busi­ness sup­port group is cur­rent­ly as­sess­ing the fi­nan­cial im­pact of the out­age.

He es­ti­mates hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars were lost as ser­vices from both bmo­bile and Dig­i­cel were im­pact­ed, while busi­ness­es were un­able to ac­cept card pay­ments due to tem­po­rary point-of-sale out­ages.

“This one was the worst. Noth­ing worked. We heard about TSTT do­ing re­dun­dan­cy, but where is the re­dun­dan­cy?” Williams asked, adding, “The whole of To­ba­go was held cap­tive. Crim­i­nals could have wreaked hav­oc on the is­land and no­body does any­thing to save any­body, more than cry and go in your cor­ner.”

Williams said To­ba­go will re­main vul­ner­a­ble un­til ex­tra com­po­nents are in­stalled in the event of an­oth­er fail­ure of the fi­bre op­tic ca­ble sys­tem.

He said the in­ci­dent un­der­scores the dan­ger of the is­land be­ing cut off and he is call­ing for an im­me­di­ate and thor­ough re­view of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions link­age be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad.

In Jan­u­ary 2023, for­mer CEO of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT), Lisa Agard, an­nounced a ma­jor in­vest­ment in fi­bre roll­out across To­ba­go.

Agard said her com­pa­ny had re­cent­ly ap­proved an in­vest­ment of more than $120 mil­lion (about US$17.7 mil­lion) for an ac­cel­er­at­ed de­ploy­ment of fi­bre in­fra­struc­ture over the next 18 months through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go. 

Agard as­sured her au­di­ence at an ad­dress giv­en pri­or to the pre­sen­ta­tion of a Huawei IdeaHub at a school in north­ern To­ba­go that TSTT will be build­ing fur­ther on its ex­ist­ing fi­bre in­fra­struc­ture with fi­bre pass­ing an­oth­er 3,000 homes. 

Re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to To­ba­go, she said that in the last year TSTT had passed more than 3,200 homes, tak­ing the to­tal to more than 15,000 homes passed in To­ba­go with fi­bre con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

The ad­di­tion­al build out, she added, will take the com­pa­ny’s over­all in­vest­ment in fi­bre in To­ba­go over the past few years to over $50 mil­lion (US$7.4 mil­lion).

“When this is com­plet­ed, we will have fi­bre through­out the length and breadth of To­ba­go; 95 per cent of the is­land will have cov­er­age,” said Agard, adding that this would not be matched by any oth­er ser­vice provider in To­ba­go.