In Barbados, Telecommunications services had been provided by the Barbados Telephone Company (which later became part of Cable & Wireless) and Cable & Wireless for well over 100 years on a monopoly basis.
Government's aim in liberalizing the telecommunications sector, as set out in its Green Paper on Telecommunications in 2000, is to have Barbados positioned at the leading edge of information and communication technology in the Caribbean. It will also enable Barbadians to have wider choices in the quality and price of the services.
Liberalization of the sector in Barbados was carried out in 3 phases, with the last phase being formally implemented on February 21st 2005. Initially, the focus by the service providers was on mobile phone services (mobile service was actually addressed in Phase 1 of the process), accompanied by aggressive and highly competitive marketing and advertising campaigns designed to capture the imagination of customers, not to mention their wallets!!
However as an executive of one of the leading service providers told us, "The big push now is in Broadband services". According to him, use of broadband services (referring to Cable & Wireless' ADSL services) has grown some 400% over the last few months.
In fact a senior representative of Cable & Wireless informed us that the Company aimed to see broadband services in at least 50% of Barbadian households during the next two years. He explained that an important factor in the take-up of this service would be PC penetration in Barbados - and despite the difficulty of knowing how close existing estimates were to reality, he felt that there were presently some 30,000 PC's in Barbadian households.
"ADSL is not just high-speed internet access", the Cable & Wireless executive remarked, "but it offers our customers more utility and opportunity for services like VoIP, security applications, on-line TV, video on demand, and video streaming". He further explained that we can expect to see these services as well as others being provided in Barbados in the near future, all facilitated by the greatly increased market penetration of ADSL, as well as on going technological improvements. The Company has already invested in a network compatible with the latest standards (known as "ADSL 2-plus") and the modems it now provides to customers already use this standard. Such future proofing should allow customers to get higher speeds without having to re-invest in new equipment - we all watch this space with interest.
According to a Cable & Wireless source, the Company spent some US $3 million on upgrading its ability to provide ADSL services last year, and plans to spend a further US $1 million this year. This, combined with pricing reductions of 40% to 50%, should result in the increase of the number of ADSL lines from 1,200 last year to some 30,000 by June 2006. He estimated that 95% of the 134,000 telephone lines currently in use by customers in Barbados are ADSL capable.
In addition to existing voice and data services, corporate customers can expect IP services, IP-based Wide Area Networks, website hosting and wholesale services. Customers in all categories will have the choice of using traditional telephony services or the new IP services for their long distance telephony requirements. Pricing packages will be introduced to suit the customers' various usage patterns.
Liberalization of the Telecommunications Sector resulted in Fixed Wireless licenses being awarded by the Ministry of Energy and Public Utilities to a number of applicants. Fixed wireless services are based on principles of radio, and thus can provide connections between the telephone exchange and homes or businesses. These connections can be used by customers for access to data, internet, and voice services.
In Barbados today the vast majority of such connections are made via copper wires (known as "local loops"). Some telecommunications sector executives in Barbados think that connections of this kind based on fixed wireless technologies do not match the combination of cost, performance, quality and reliability characterized by copper local loops. However, recent entrants to the sector are of the opinion that advances in technology have rendered this statement no longer true.
One spokesman for one of the new fixed wireless service providers pointed out that there are a "new generation" of Fixed Wireless systems which can provide connectivity to customers, and support services equivalent to the copper local loop within a radius of a few miles (dependent on certain conditions, e.g. between 1 to 15 miles).
Indeed, examples of broadband services successfully deployed by various service providers based on fixed wireless technology can be found in many countries - for example, the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, the UK, and several African and Asian Countries, just to mention a few.
With the appropriate licenses in hand, new entrants to the local marketplace such as TeleBarbados and Last Mile Holdings clearly intend to solve some of the existing service availability and response problems experienced by many customers, including those in some of the rural areas, and diminish the market share currently held by Cable & Wireless.
TeleBarbados plans to provide a comprehensive range of telecommunications services throughout Barbados. It plans to build a fixed wireless Internet network using the 3.5 gigahertz frequency which will facilitate access by its customers to a fixed wireless Internet and data network service and it envisages that customers will enjoy broadband speeds of up to 3Mb/sec. This speed can support many of the advanced services mention earlier, e.g. VoIP and video streaming.
According to information on its website, TeleBarbados will also provide this network infrastructure to other carriers on a wholesale basis. TeleBarbados plans to connect its domestic and fixed wireless network to the rest of the world through Antilles Crossing, a 938 kilometre fibre-optic cable system which will extend from Barbados to St. Lucia and into an international landing station in St. Croix, thereby facilitating long distance services.
Following is a summary of Services which will be provided by TeleBarbados:
- Long distance telephony services (both analogue and IP)
- International private line and data services, including provision for bandwidth on demand
- High-speed fixed wireless Internet services
- Data warehousing, business continuity and disaster recovery services
- Wholesale carrier transport
Another new licensee and entrant to the sector is Last Mile Holdings. Its plans generally appear to be similar to those of TeleBarbados.
Both new players plan to provide broadband services to customers via customer premises equipment that is easily installable - typically for residential situations no complicated antenna installation or connection would be necessary. All that would be needed would be a "box" or piece of equipment which has two standard sockets - one which accepts a standard telephone set, and one which accepts a standard PC network connection (Ethernet). Thus the customer can easily connect his/her telephone and PC, and access voice, data or video services as may be appropriate.
The advantage of this technology is that it lends itself to rapid deployment at low cost - as long as the service provider has his base stations and network set up and working, addition of customers should be easily done. Addition of each new customer can then be accomplished without the expense of a "truck roll" (as use of a service truck with installation technicians is called in the industry). The user is not required to install any software. So this should result in lower installation charges to the customer when compared with the equivalent wired service.
Typically, installation of this type of technology in a commercial or business setting would be somewhat more complex, since antennae installations as well as additional equipment (network routers and so on) are usually required in such a setting.
However are there those who think that all this sounds too good to be true. One caution offered by an experienced executive in the industry is that fixed wireless systems require a carefully thought out plan to make sure than you do not overload your network. He noted that scalability is not as easy as with traditional wired systems, so any new entrant expecting to sign up and activate 40 new internet accounts in one day would be wise to re-examine the all requirements and possibilities before making promises to customers.
Successful deployment of fixed wireless services by these new entrants depends on their ability and viability to install a sufficient number of base stations and backhaul capacity (i.e. facilities interconnecting the base stations) in enough geographic areas, together with acceptance by residential and business customers of the different pricing, service and performance / quality aspects of these systems.
Fixed wireless solutions can be used to provide what many customers of the incumbent provider of the existing fixed line data networking infrastructure need, i.e. a means of providing resilience for their networks. The fixed wireless providers are in a position to offer these customers duplicate "overlay" networks in cases where this is desirable, to ensure resilience in case of loss of service from their existing wired facility.
One important aspect of provision of telecommunications services is of course customer service. In Barbados, as in all other countries which had their services provided by a monopoly, users of the services could be considered "consumers" since they had no choices. Liberalization is already beginning to change all that, and industry players, including the incumbent and former monopoly provider, are keenly aware of the concept of "customers" and the need for "excellent customer service". It remains to be seen which provider will take this concept to the next level, and actually focuses on delighting rather than just satisfying the customer.
It is clear that there are exciting times ahead for the telecommunications sector in Barbados. The stage is set for vigorous, healthy competition in the provision of telecommunications services to customers traditionally provided via fixed lines. New technologies and services are being introduced by all service providers. There is no reason why Government's goal in liberalization of the sector should not be realized - that is, Barbados being positioned at the leading edge of ICT in the Caribbean, and greater choice in the quality and price of the telecommunications services which Barbadians use.
Written by Michael Forde, President, NexLevel Information Services Inc.
Reproduced from Business Barbados 2006 with the permission of Caribbean Business Publications.
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