Infrastructure, electricity major hindrances to hinterland expansion – GTT’s CEO

As part of its drive to innovate for the benefit of everyone, local telecommunications giant GTT is looking to enhance and expand its services to meet the needs and demands of customers, but its reach to hinterland communities is hindered by the lack of necessary infrastructure such as roads and reliable electricity.

This is according to newly-appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Damian Blackburn. During an interview with Guyana Times on Thursday, Blackburn explained that reaching the hinterland is a challenge faced by all telecoms operators in Guyana, and even the Government.
“Even before I came to Guyana, I was made aware of and did research myself about the hinterland areas and the specific challenges there… In some of these communities, I understand, there aren’t even roads to some of them. So, the first challenge when you have to bring a fibre line is that you need a road to bring a fibre line. Next thing is you usually need reliable electricity. That’s a challenge for those communities, as you know, because the equipment that operates there needs electricity,” he pointed out.
According to the new GTT Head, the best way to create 21st century or even 20th century telecoms for those hinterland areas is to connect the mobile sites that exist with fibre.
“So that when the customer call or tries to access the Internet, the call has to come back to a call system perhaps here in this building before it goes onwards to where it’s going either in Guyana or internationally. So, there needs to be a connection from that community to here,” Blackburn said from the boardroom of GTT’s head office on Brickdam, Georgetown.
Nevertheless, he outlined that there were other options that the local telecommunications giant was investing in to improve its services to citizens in the hinterland. One such area is microwave technology, which is a line-of-sight wireless communication technology that uses high-frequency beams of radio waves to provide high speed wireless connections that can send and receive voice, video, and data information.
The GTT CEO posited that the company would continue to explore this technology to enhance its services in these outlying regions.
“We’ve actually spent a lot of investment dollars this year on upgrading our microwave capacity to give more connections to these communities in the hinterland and in the other areas we already serve,” Blackburn noted.
However, the newly-appointed GTT boss is of the view that there needed to be greater collaboration with stakeholders in the local telecommunications sector in order to solve the challenges faced in this area – a call which he made during a Public Utilities Commission webinar last week.
“The most existing prospect to make this work is satellite, obviously… I know the telecommunications agencies are researching hard in this area; we are too, and if we all collaborate, we will have more chance of success. I also hope that we can collaborate where it makes sense and not just satellite, but on other connectivity where it would make sense for all of us to do that, you know to make it more economic to get the right infrastructure to communities,” Blackburn posited.
The new GTT Head is only 40 plus days on the job and has already outlined a pathway to improve the overall experience and service being offered to consumers as part of his 100-day plan.
Under the company’s “Together We Rise” brand, GTT will be looking to strengthen relations with communities, customers and the country.
Blackburn has promised that the unusually long wait times on customer service calls and long in-store queues would be a thing of the past. This will see improvements in the automatic call system along with the recruitment of additional customer service agents, while more MMG agents and GTT outlets will be opened to facilitate payments and other services across the country.
New Chief Operations Officer (COO) for Home and Fixed Services, Eshwar Thakurdin; Head of Mobile Business Unit, Richard Stanton; COO for GTT’s Business Solutions, Orson Ferguson, and MMG General Manager, Babita Ram, are the four persons who will be directly working with the new CEO in realising the telecommunications giant’s goals. (Vahnu Manikchand)