Monday, February 15, 2010
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BTC working hard on Haiti communication By Inderia Saunders ~ Guardian Business Reporter ~ inderia@nasguard.com: The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) is presently working to restore full connectivity to and from Haiti on its $6 million submarine fiber optic cable, with that country's technical center badly damaged in the earthquake. While executives said the cable itself, which runs from Inagua to Haiti, is intact, the center that houses the operating equipment has been damaged. "We're trying to see if we can move quickly to create some kind of temporary solution to put in place until we are able to rebuild that particular facility," said VP of Marketing and Sales Marlon Johnson. "We are working with Teleco D'Haiti as well as some vendors that were on the cable as well as some of the firms and international coordinating entities to see what we can do to create some temporary connectivity and help move traffic in and out of Haiti. "That demand, we suspect, will be substantial." In 2006, BTC ran a submarine fiber optic cable to that expanding market through a partnership arrangement with phone company Teleco D'Haiti, transmitting data traffic out of Haiti into The Bahamas and from The Bahamas to the U.S. It's a high-tech, underwater highway that BTC had a lock on as the owner of the only cable of its kind terminating in Haiti. By all estimates as many as three million residents use cell phones in Haiti and getting communication in and out of the country has been key in the last several weeks. "We had commercialized this in April of 2009 and we had already put several customers on it and we were excited obviously on prospects for the year," he said. "But right now our key focus is to make sure we get that cable back up and continue doing what we can to support the public and private sector in actually getting people fed and medicine to people. "And facilitating communication between The Bahamas and Haiti."
Wednesday January 3, 2010 |
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