Ma­jor­i­ty State-owned TSTT is the on­ly telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider in T&T that has 5G tech­nol­o­gy and will on­ly be avail­able in the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Park that is at present un­der con­struc­tion.

This has been con­firmed by the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of CAN­TO Tere­sa Wankin who said the Trade or­gan­i­sa­tion is en­cour­ag­ing its mem­bers to adopt 5G be­cause of its ben­e­fits to the econ­o­my.

She said in the re­gion there are on­ly two providers that have the tech­nol­o­gy.

“So right now we have two op­er­a­tors in the re­gion that car­ry 5G, one more so than the oth­er. So Telesur in Suri­name, they’ve launched 5G last year and they are the most ad­vanced I would say right now in terms of mak­ing in­roads in­to 5G.”

Wankin added, “5G is re­vi­tal­is­ing the econ­o­my in Suri­name, not just in the Tele­com sec­tor, but any oth­er in­dus­try as well. And then to a less­er ex­tent we, right here in Trinidad, you might be aware that TSTT would have launched 5G some time ago and they launched it for most­ly busi­ness­es. Right now they are fo­cus­ing most­ly on Phoenix Park with 5G. So they’re do­ing some­thing, more like a pro­to­type test­ing and they are still fo­cus­ing on their 4G net­works, but it’s not like in Suri­name where they have launched 5G on a larg­er scale, and get­ting a lot of trac­tion from it, but I think it’s just a mat­ter of the strat­e­gy that TSTT has a dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy than Telesur in Suri­name.”

The CAN­TO Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al said there are sev­er­al rea­sons why a com­pa­ny may de­cide not to go full-fledged 5G. One of those is that the com­pa­ny may have an al­ready ex­ist­ing 4G net­work that it would have spent mon­ey on.

“Now I’m not speak­ing from ex­pe­ri­ence and I am not speak­ing of any one ser­vice provider, but their strate­gic ob­jec­tive would lie with­in where they want that com­pa­ny to go in a par­tic­u­lar time frame. Now 5G, we all know the ben­e­fits of 5G. So af­ter GS­MA, we had GS­MA come down to the re­gion and did sev­er­al talks and con­ver­sa­tions with op­er­a­tors, with reg­u­la­tors and al­so with gov­ern­ments on the im­por­tance of 5G and the po­ten­tial for eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and spurring dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion across the re­gion and stuff like that. So dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies might have dif­fer­ent lev­els of what they want, when they want to im­ple­ment 5G. But hav­ing said that, at CAN­TO we all know the po­ten­tial of 5G, but our role as an in­dus­try as­so­ci­a­tion is to re­al­ly ed­u­cate the mem­bers and to show them the busi­ness case for it,” ex­plained Wankin.

5G is the fifth gen­er­a­tion net­work. It will al­low you to have ac­cess to mul­ti­ple de­vices at the same time. Fur­ther, it will of­fer sta­ble da­ta con­nec­tions, im­proved band­width for ac­cess­ing and shar­ing big da­ta. All in all, 5G will min­imise the lag times and im­prove the abil­i­ty to com­pile da­ta quick­ly. It means with 5G you can down­load the high-de­f­i­n­i­tion film in a frac­tion of sec­onds, which takes about an hour with the cur­rent 4G net­works.

5G tech­nol­o­gy can de­ploy many new ap­pli­ca­tions that will im­prove the qual­i­ty of life in­clud­ing the de­vel­op­ment of smart homes, smart cities and even things like self dri­ving ve­hi­cles.

Wankin said CAN­TO can­not say which com­pa­ny will switch over or when be­cause there are many oth­er is­sues to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and a com­pa­ny busi­ness plan is what would guide where they want to go with it.

“Hav­ing said that there are quite a few ser­vice providers in the re­gion. When I say in the re­gion, not re­sid­ing in the re­gion but ser­vice the re­gion, who has 5G plat­form and who are al­so en­cour­ag­ing dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es to go in­to that area, to take that slant and in­vest in that 5G net­work. From a se­cu­ri­ty per­spec­tive we are al­so push­ing it and mak­ing a case,” re­vealed Wankin.

She pre­dict­ed that 5G will first be rolled out in in­dus­tri­al ar­eas first but not­ed that pan­dem­ic has been an ac­cel­er­a­tor for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and has forced the world to look at dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and a dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion agen­da.

“Right here in Trinidad you’re see­ing the in­roads we’re mak­ing with the gov­ern­ment, the es­tab­lish­ing a min­istry of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and that says, a lot about where the coun­try is go­ing as far as dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion,” CAN­TO Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al told Guardian Me­dia.

Wankin added that many Caribbean coun­tries and gov­ern­ments are see­ing the im­por­tance of pay­ing at­ten­tion to the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion as a means of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and ex­pects more gov­ern­ments to es­tab­lish min­istries with sim­i­lar port­fo­lios.

Wankin said the In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union ITU had done sev­er­al stud­ies on dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and dig­i­tal im­ple­men­ta­tion as a means of eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment, not just in ur­ban ar­eas, but in rur­al ar­eas for the em­pow­er­ment of women and chil­dren and un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties.

She said all coun­tries in the Caribbean will be in­creas­ing its use of tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove its eco­nom­ic per­for­mance and point­ed to a re­cent an­nounce­ment to grow berries in To­ba­go as an ex­am­ple of how tech­nol­o­gy could be a game chang­er in the re­gion.

Wankin said 5G will al­so ben­e­fit the heav­i­ly re­liant tourism coun­tries in the Caribbean.

“Look for Bar­ba­dos, look for Ja­maica of course, Trinidad and To­ba­go is al­ways there, Cay­man Is­lands, Turks and Caicos as well. Turks and Caicos re­cent­ly es­tab­lished a min­istry that deals with dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion as well. They were the first to im­ple­ment it to deal with COVID test­ing.”

She said smart homes, smart cities and se­cu­ri­ty will ben­e­fit from 5G. “The in­ter­net is some­thing that is to be reck­oned with be­cause it’s there to be used even for pre­vent­ing cy­ber crime, for the se­cur­ing of prop­er­ties, the po­ten­tial is so much Cur­tis I don’t want to sound like I’m just talk­ing. There is a po­ten­tial for every in­dus­try from agri­cul­tur­al, so in St Vin­cent they are do­ing some very short, small projects on Smart agri­cul­ture, right? And just re­cent­ly, they start­ed to talk in To­ba­go about do­ing a straw­ber­ry farm so there is a lot of po­ten­tial,” Wankin end­ed.

CAN­TO and the Of­fice of Util­i­ties Reg­u­la­tion in Ja­maica are host­ing a sem­i­nar on 5G in which they look at whether the re­gion is ready for the tech­nol­o­gy.