On Fri­day, Dig­i­cel Trinidad and To­ba­go in­tro­duced their 4G mo­bile broad­band ser­vice, a long-await­ed and sig­nif­i­cant up­grade from the GPRS/EDGE con­nec­tions which have been the stan­dard for In­ter­net con­nec­tions to cel­lu­lar phones for more than a decade.

Lo­cal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­cum­bent TSTT has an­nounced the build, out of their own 4G net­work sched­uled for com­ple­tion in Sep­tem­ber. Com­pet­i­tive con­sid­er­a­tions aside, and that's re­mov­ing a lot from the ta­ble, since both providers seem set for a vig­or­ous bat­tle for mind­share over the next six months, true mo­bile broad­band is set to change many pre­sump­tions about lo­cal In­ter­net use.

By Jan­u­ary 2013, Trinidad and To­ba­go's in­ter­net con­sump­tion pro­file will look quite dif­fer­ent. Cel­lu­lar phones en­joy the widest dis­tri­b­u­tion of any com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy, but mo­bile In­ter­net pen­e­tra­tion, ac­cord­ing to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty's Mar­ket up­date for 2011 con­tin­ues to hov­er at around 10 per cent. This is sur­pris­ing­ly high for a ser­vice which has of­fered di­al-up speed for most of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

The head­room for growth be­comes clear­er when com­pared to the 56 per cent mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion for fixed In­ter­net con­nec­tions to house­holds. Two things are pre­dictable in the mar­ket for this new tech­nol­o­gy-ini­tial rates will be rel­a­tive­ly high, and com­pe­ti­tion for cus­tomers will be vig­or­ous when both play­ers, of­fer­ing ri­val HSPA+ net­works, pur­sue the in­stalled base of mo­bile phone users.

The en­thu­si­asm of lo­cal cel­lu­lar phone users for adopt­ing new tech­nolo­gies will al­so play a role in the rate of adop­tion for mo­bile broad­band. Trinidad and To­ba­go was a leader in un­lock­ing the iPhone af­ter it was in­tro­duced, and that was when re­mov­ing car­ri­er re­stric­tions from the de­vice was quite chal­leng­ing.

This am­pli­fi­ca­tion of In­ter­net ac­cess will bring both op­por­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has made a com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing that chil­dren are dig­i­tal­ly con­nect­ed when they en­ter sec­ondary schools, first with lap­tops and soon, if con­ver­sa­tions on the mat­ter turn to ac­tion, on tablets.

More con­nec­tiv­i­ty choic­es will mean that there will be a greater need for IT de­part­ment lev­el teacher and par­ent mon­i­tor­ing of these dig­i­tal tools and more ro­bust ed­u­ca­tion about the way these tech­nolo­gies should be used by the chil­dren they are in­tend­ed to ben­e­fit.

Busi­ness­es will need to be­gin prepar­ing for a com­mu­ni­ca­tions cli­mate in which a web-en­abled pub­lic mi­grates to In­ter­net based chan­nels for in­for­ma­tion and to cul­ti­vate busi­ness re­la­tion­ships. Com­pa­nies which are first movers on these pos­si­bil­i­ties will reap the re­wards of ear­ly adop­tion.

Of all the sec­tors to be af­fect­ed by the com­ing of mo­bile broad­band, the lo­cal soft­ware de­vel­op­ment in­dus­try is best poised to take ad­van­tage of a sub­stan­tial growth in not just lo­cal broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty, but a surge in con­sump­tion of lo­cal con­tent and ser­vices.

De­liv­er­ing that in­for­ma­tion and those ser­vices ef­fi­cient­ly and el­e­gant­ly can act as a lever­ag­ing in­cen­tive for re­al ex­pan­sion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the lo­cal tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor. The Gov­ern­ment's role in what must re­main a pri­vate sec­tor ser­vice, sub­ject to the va­garies of the mar­ket and all its at­ten­dant re­wards for suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion, must be that of a fa­cil­i­ta­tor.

Quite apart from ob­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives to de­vel­op its own ser­vice-based apps and im­proved In­ter­net ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, is the need to fo­cus its en­gage­ment in the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor on crit­i­cal­ly need­ed sup­port sys­tems. It is one of the great in­fra­struc­ture er­rors of our lo­cal tech­nol­o­gy in­dus­try that many of our most pop­u­lar lo­cal Web sites are host­ed in the US, cre­at­ing need­less sub­sea traf­fic to view con­tent cre­at­ed lo­cal­ly and con­sumed, to a large de­gree, by lo­cal In­ter­net users.

The Gov­ern­ment should act as an in­cu­ba­tor for more mar­ket fo­cused pro­gram­ming train­ing and en­sure that long de­layed projects such as the tech­nol­o­gy park at Tamana sub­stan­tive­ly ad­dress the fu­ture needs of a more dig­i­tal­ly en­abled Trinidad and To­ba­go.