Less than a month after the launch of its new US$30 million submarine cable facility, the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) disclosed that it has more than tripled sales of its Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service with the current number of broadband subscribers now up to 8,000. Sales of the new service remain limited to Georgetown and the company says it is sticking to its incremental rollout plan announced several weeks ago.
Since the July 1 launch of the new submarine cable GT&T has also established strategic partnerships with private sector entities, which, it says, paves the way for significantly cheaper and enhanced consumer access to IT-related goods and services.
On the eve of yesterday’s official commissioning of the new cable system, the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Yog Mahadeo, who assumes duty as its Chief Executive Officer on Sunday and Director of Sales and Marketing Wyston Robertson provided a briefing on strategic business partnerships agreed with local entities and which have been made possible on account of the cheaper bandwidth now available via the new cable.
Some of the new partnerships, according to Mahadeo, are already a reality. At yesterday’s commissioning ceremony a partnership with the local IT service provider, Starr Computers to place a new, low-cost computer on the market was due to be announced. Mahadeo said that the initiative “will see our bandwidth coming together with that computer.” Yesterday, GT&T was also due to make public another strategic partnership with the local company Brainstreet aimed at the creation of a new virtual classroom.
“This particular initiative will put a worldwide library at our fingertips,” Mahadeo told the briefing. The company was also due to announce a further partnership that seeks to make significant volumes of data available for education in Guyana.
Meanwhile, Robertson told the briefing that GT&T detected “a sense of excitement” in the private sector over the prospects which the cable holds for the growth and expansion of the business sector. “We have been able to demonstrate the savings that the private sector will see in the price for bandwidth.” He said that while, previously, consumers would pay $50,000 for the company’s 512 KPSL service, they are now paying $33,000 for twice that capacity.
Robertson said GT&T is also seeking to establish partnerships with local commercial banks which would render their operations both more efficient and more profitable while ensuring some measure of return for their customers. Accordingly, GT&T will be seeking to offer banks cheaper bandwidth while seeking to have them “give back” through the creation of accessible loan schemes to help customers acquire personal computers and laptops for their children. “The availability of cheaper bandwidth now significantly opens up possibilities for enhancement of academia,” Robertson said.
Mahadeo told the briefing that the new submarine cable has satisfied the company’s expectations, meeting “all of the benchmarks that one would use to evaluate its performance.” He said the July launch had been intended specifically to provide the company with an opportunity to assess its performance. He disclosed that the company had received and was responding to “some complaints” from customers but those complaints were linked to the quality of the lines rather than to the performance of the cable. He said the company was confident that it possessed the technical capacity to manage “the new technology” which the cable represents, having invested in providing relevant training through both in-service programmes and overseas training in China, the United States and the Caribbean. “As technologies have evolved we have also followed up with training on all sides of the company including the engineering and data network sides and even on the basic DSL installs.
The moment we realized that July 1 was our launch date we had internal as well as overseas training sessions with our technicians,” Mahadeo said.
Robertson told the briefing that GT&T also bolstered the capacity of its Call Centre to respond to customer complaints about its new DSL service.
And according to Robertson the new cable’s capacity to provide effective redundancy was one of the critical benchmarks which, manifestly, had been met.
He disclosed that since the July 1 launch of the new submarine cable, the company experienced at least 12 outages on the old Americas 11 cable, pointing out that the presence of the new cable had saved the company the considerable criticism it otherwise would have had to face.
Meanwhile, the Marketing and Sales Director said GT&T wants the new cable to be seen as much more than an accomplishment for the company. “It is not just about GT&T. It is about every consumer understanding that they need to get on board; it is about software providers realizing that they need to provide applications that bring particular value to individuals; it is about every business understanding and taking advantage of the opportunities which the new cable affords.”
