Just days after rolling out its 4G service, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GTT Justin Nedd is confident about the impending liberalisation of the local telecommunications sector. The Head of the local telephone giant sat down with the Guyana Times for an exclusive interview in which he declared GTT’s readiness for the liberalisation. Nedd pointed out that this will provide a level the playing field for all the players in the sector. “I believe that the sector is already liberalised, though not formally, but once the Bill is passed and assented to law, everybody will have to play by the same rules, report to the same regulator, pay the same taxes and I believe we are ready for that because we have been doing it for decades,” the CEO stated.
After months of consultations, the Telecommunications Bill has been sent to the Attorney General’s Chambers for legal vetting, following which it will be forwarded to Cabinet for final review before being presented to the
Justin Nedd at the launch of the 4G Internet service on Monday last
National Assembly for passage.
Telecommunications Minister Cathy Hughes has stated she hopes to have the proposed legislation passed before the end of this month. According to Nedd, GTT is ready to relinquish its monopoly and is looking forward to having discussions with the Government, along with its parent company Atlantic Tele-Network (ATN), on the way forward.
Welcomes competition
Asked about the impending competition following the break of the 20-plus year monopoly that the company has over the sector, the Chief Executive Officer posited that GTT has been competing with its main opponent DIGICEL for several years on many fronts and so customers can expect only better things. “We’ve been competing on providing Internet services, we’ve been competing on mobile services, we’ve been competing on enterprise services, and like I said, we are really doing what we do, preparing, working on our people, our customer care and our services. So in next few months, you will see just a really dizzying array of things that we’ll put out there that are great benefits to the customers,” the CEO said. Nedd further outlined that this is an exciting time for the company and the industry as he mentioned the recent launch of the 4G service and upgraded broadband speeds. Having spent millions of US dollars to install equipment and prepare for this new service, Nedd expressed appreciation to Government, more so, Minister Hughes for taking a bold step in granting the increased spectrum that allows GTT to do more for its customers.
“I’ve gotten several calls and whatsapp messages and texts from customers who are blown away by the speed of the network and what they can do now. So I would say that our customers are happy with our 4G network and with our pricing as well. We rolled out this network that cost us more than a billion Guyana dollars and the prices (for mobile services) have decreased, so it a huge win for our customers,” the CEO noted. Speaking about the challenges faced with rolling out this new network, the GTT head pointed out that with any technical deployment, there are hiccups but the company has a team of “core guys and gyals” who work in the Tech Department and in Customer Care as well. Nedd took the opportunity to commend his staff for their efforts and sacrifices over the past weeks to ensure that the 4G launch was successful. On Monday last, the company launched the 4G service giving subscribers internet speeds 30 times faster than before, enabling them to surf, stream and download from the internet at an accelerated pace. GTT will be giving to its customers three times more data at the same rates which were applied under the 2G service and unused data will be rolled over to the next activated plan. However, the 4G internet currently only has a span of 85 per cent coverage of Guyana and access is only centred mostly in Georgetown, up to Good Success, East Coast Demerara and all the way to Timehri, East Bank Demerara. The head of the local telephone giant explained that while the 4G service is limited to these areas, the company is working on having the new network deployed countrywide. “I don’t want to give exact dates but I would say within a few weeks you will see results. We will be doing announcements all the time, but it’s phased and it’s going to be continually deployed,” he stated.
No slowing down
The CEO further outlined that the company is adequately equipped so that when the 4G service is deployed throughout the country, then it will not in any way affect the speed of the Internet. “Our towers are connected via fibreoptic [cables] which is light and it’s blazing fast; and I can say other people’s towers may not be connected with fibre but we are.
We have spent over US$30 million back in 2010 to bring Internet into the country so we have redundant paths of Internet, we have redundant fibre range to our cell sites.
We are really prepared, we are a robust company, we’ve got a good team and we’ve got a team that’s enthusiastic about bringing service to our customers and doing more for our customers,” he remarked.
Responding to rumours that the 4G service is being launched only for Guyana massive 50th Independence anniversary celebrations, Nedd opted only to say that the biggest challenge and heartbreak is giving people something they really love and then taking it back.
