RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA
rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

De­spite com­plaints of no in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty in far-flung ar­eas of the is­lands, T&T's main in­ter­net ser­vice providers say broad­band cov­er­age has been achieved for 95 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion.

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) meet­ing held to ad­dress the is­sue of hy­brid learn­ing, TSTT's Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Lisa Agard and Dig­i­cel's CEO Abra­ham Smith told the Com­mit­tee there has been sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in broad­band in­fra­struc­ture.

"We have reached over 95 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion of T&T with broad­band ca­pa­bil­i­ty whether it be fixed or wire­less," Agard re­vealed.  She not­ed that even though 95 per cent had ac­cess, there was on­ly an 80 per cent up­take of con­nec­tiv­i­ty by cit­i­zens.

“This meant that some peo­ple could not af­ford in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty”, she added.

The 6th Vir­tu­al Meet­ing of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on So­cial Ser­vices and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, held on Wednes­day 21 April 2021, sought to ex­am­ine the ef­fects of the hy­brid learn­ing sys­tem on stu­dent per­for­mance in gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed schools dur­ing the re­vised COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

The TSTT CEO ex­plained to Com­mit­tee mem­bers that 401,000 house­holds have high-speed broad­band in­ter­net ac­cess, with speeds of 10 megs (megabits) or more.

"But there is a gap be­tween take-up and cov­er­age. It means some fam­i­lies are chal­lenged fi­nan­cial­ly to ac­cess the net­works," she added.

Agard said TSTT, Dig­i­cel and Flow have been hold­ing dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, and they have come up with a plan to help 6,000 low-in­come house­holds who can­not af­ford in­ter­net.

"We will of­fer to low-in­come house­holds a $100 pack­age, VAT in­clu­sive, al­low­ing a 15 megs speed to 6,000 house­holds. Each ser­vice provider will cater for 2,000 house­holds each. We are work­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion which will do a means test, based on a sur­vey of those who do not have the in­ter­net at home," Agard said.

She not­ed that the in­ter­net ser­vice providers have re­ceived a list of stu­dents who do not have the in­ter­net at home.

There has al­so been an in­crease in us­age, she re­port­ed to the JSC.

"We had 351,906 broad­band sub­scrip­tions in 2020, which was a 2.9 per cent in­crease com­pared to the pri­or year," she added.

Mean­while, Dig­i­cel CEO Abra­ham Smith said there has been a 56 per cent in­crease in fixed net­works and a 64 per cent in­crease in mo­bile net­work con­nec­tiv­i­ty, over the past year.

He said Dig­i­cel in­vest­ed $1.5 bil­lion in fi­bre and mo­bile broad­band net­work in­fra­struc­ture in 2016. He not­ed that Dig­i­cel of­fered over $170 mil­lion in re­lief dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

But MP for Ari­ma and Hous­ing Min­is­ter Pene­lope Beck­les said de­spite these sta­tis­tics, many ar­eas along the North Coast were still af­fect­ed by a lack of con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Among these were Blan­chissuese, parts of Moru­ga and Ica­cos.

MP for Cou­va South Rudranath In­dars­ingh said some schools were still with­out con­nec­tiv­i­ty even though class­es had re­sumed for some stu­dents.

But Chan­dri­ka Sama­roo, Dig­i­cel's Op­er­a­tions Di­rec­tor ex­plained that the ter­rain of­ten af­fects in­ter­net ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty in some ar­eas.

"It is quite ex­pen­sive and not fi­nan­cial­ly fea­si­ble to set up broad­band in­fra­struc­ture in some ar­eas, but we will ex­plore op­tions over the next 12 months," he said.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor David Nakhid slammed the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) for re­ly­ing on ser­vice providers for in­for­ma­tion on ar­eas that were not ser­viced by con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

"They will not go in­to ar­eas where it is not fi­nan­cial­ly fea­si­ble to op­er­ate. They will not make mon­ey. How could you re­ly on ser­vice providers to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on ar­eas which did not have in­ter­net?" Sen­a­tor Nakhid said.

The Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor lament­ed that the last dig­i­tal di­vide sur­vey done by TATT was done in 2013-2014.

TATT's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Cyn­thia Red­dock-Downes, said they have been re­ceiv­ing da­ta from peo­ple who can­not ac­cess the in­ter­net as well as in­ter­net ser­vice providers. This da­ta has been mapped out, she added.

Act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, Claudelle McKel­lar, said 13 more ICT Ac­cess Cen­tres will be rolled out soon.

These will be lo­cat­ed in Beetham Gar­dens, La Pas­to­ra, San­ta Cruz and La Hor­quet­ta.