The Tribune

THE Bahamas Telecommunications Company announced yesterday that the initial phase of its mobile network build-out is almost complete.

When fully operational, company officials say, the new system will put the Bahamas on par with other “21 century countries” in terms of modern mobile technology.

The country-wide roll out of brand new 2G and 4G networks follows 18 months of a painstaking programme of upgrades, replacements, modernisation and expansion to an existing but restricted system, the company said.

BTC will now begin next generation Long Term Evolution, or 4G LTE, a “lightning speed” wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals.

The initial phase of the LTE build-out is scheduled for next year.

BTC CEO Geoff Houston said Phase 1 of “an exciting big picture” modernisation and expansion for BTC is now complete with the high speed 4G network now available throughout the Bahamas.

“We have successfully met our targets for Phase I; the build-out of the new 2G and 4G networks is materially complete and we are in compliance with broad performance key performance indicators or KPIs, as expected,” said the CEO.

“Our mobile equipment supplier, Ericsson, indicates that, since completing some adjustments to the network over the last few weeks, the BTC network ranks 26th worldwide in terms of performance in relation to the over 100 networks that Ericsson has deployed worldwide.

“We are very appreciative to our customers who have been exceedingly patient with us as we ripped out and replaced virtually every element of our network.

“However,” Mr Houston added, “BTC’s work is not done. We are replacing our voicemail platform early in the new year as we are aware that some customers continue to have issues with that obsolete platform.

“We recently completed the expansion of 15 4G cell sites in New Providence and Grand Bahama to double capacity in those areas.

“As one would anticipate on a dynamic network, we still have a few problematic areas that we will continue to work to perfect. The good news though is that there are very few of those and we are actively working on them. We feel very confident in saying that the customer experience today is much improved over that of just a few months or even a few weeks ago.”

The CEO noted that the inevitable glitches emanating from fast growth can be problematic at times and the network and its users often struggle.

“What we want to do presently is to shift to individual customer issues and very specific geographical areas where residual problems may remain.

“Accordingly, we do want customers to contact us directly when they are having call or data issues and to be very detailed with their problem: the more specifics they give us, the better we can resolve issues in a timely and satisfactory manner at both the people and technological levels.

“We have achieved extremely substantial technology advances in just 18 months, including the 4G roll-out in just one year, all whilst maintaining the old one – teething problems are to be expected, and for the most part, customers do understand that.”

Over the past two weekends, BTC has celebrated two one-year anniversaries – high speed 4G roll-out and the opening of their first flagship store in 2011 at the Mall at Marathon, and the ribbon cutting on their newest and largest store to date in the Southwest Plaza.