By NATARIO McKENZIE
Tribune Business Reporter
nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net
The Bahamas is "uniquely positioned" to enhance its status as a centre for information and communications technology (ITC), sector regulators said yesterday, adding that their goal was to enhance its economic role.
Stephen Bereaux, the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority's (URCA) chief executive, told Tribune Business: "Some countries have made a name for themselves in ICTs. When you think ICTs, you think Singapore and South Korea.
"The Bahamas is uniquely positioned given our proximity to the US, and the cables that run between us and the world. We have a very significant ICT infrastructure under the water that connects most of our islands with good capacity in terms of connectivity. By air we are very well linked to the US. You have areas like Freeport that are ripe for investment."
Mr Bereaux was speaking after a press conference to announce the 17th Global Symposium for Regulators, or GSR-17, which will be held at the Atlantis resort between July 11 and 14.
He said: "Just in the way we have sort of combined sports conferences and sports tourism, I believe that there is scope to leverage and enhance our stature in the world as a premiere tourist destination combined with a well-connected infrastructure.
"The 'Smart Bahamas' that the Government has taken on speaks to how do you take everything we do every day, and make it better by adding technology."
He added: "It requires that we create it as a focus for what we do. ICTs, as an afterthought for a business or ministry, is not enough to leverage the power of ICTs. The power of ICT has to be leveraged from looking at an overview of our country and seeing how we can link all of the individual parts.
"URCA's push has been to pull ICT out of a support role or function, and give it a role of its own so that it can then really enhance the way we work as a country as a whole. That is what our work with the ITU is about; bringing to the Bahamas the dialogue that we need to have to catapult us to the next level. ICT presents perhaps the most promising platform upon which we can build and enhance the Bahamian society."
Comments
DaGoobs 7 years, 4 months ago
These guys at URCA can't even get BTC and Cable Bahamas to provide high speed internet throughout every island in the Bahamas at a price under $40 a month but want us to believe that the Bahamas is "uniquely positioned" to enhance its status as a centre for information and communications technology based on the 3 subsea fibre optic cable systems that run between here and the USA? Please! The other thing is that this conference is called the Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR) for a reason. It is organized by the ITU and as anyone knows, The ITU is an agency of the United Nations, so the conference is really a gathering of communications/ITC regulators speaking about high level policy matters on behalf of their governments. These sessions are not open to the public nor do they invite public participation. There is no evidence to show that for all the GSRs that URCA has attended over its 8 years of existence that it has resulted in any enhancement of the country's status as a centre for ICT or enhanced the country's economic role.
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