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Monday, July 28, 2025

US$25m project aims to harmonise Caribbean infrastructure development

St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, Grena­da work to­geth­er to im­prove re­gion's telecomms net­work

by

20140203

Gov­ern­ments of the East­ern Caribbean have tak­en a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward har­mon­is­ing their coun­tries' in­vest­ments in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture. A re­gion­al project, called the Caribbean Re­gion­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions In­fra­struc­ture Pro­gramme (CAR­CIP), is bridg­ing the gaps in re­gion­al broad­band com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­vel­op­ment.

High-rank­ing of­fi­cials from St Lu­cia, Grena­da and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines are meet­ing this week with of­fi­cials from the East­ern Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty (ECTEL) and the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU) to share in­sights in­to how each coun­try is tack­ling the re­gion-wide chal­lenge of de­vel­op­ing its telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture.

The high-lev­el meet­ing, or­gan­ised by the CTU as part of CAR­CIP, is tak­ing place in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad from Feb­ru­ary 3rd to 4th.

"On the sur­face, the project tar­gets the es­tab­lish­ment and im­prove­ment of the re­gion's phys­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works. But the re­al is­sue is the ma­jor ben­e­fit that greater qual­i­ty and af­ford­abil­i­ty can bring to the re­gion's gov­ern­ments, health cen­tres, schools, uni­ver­si­ties, na­tion­al emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works and so on," said Sel­by Wil­son, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Strate­gist, CTU.

CAR­CIP takes a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to the de­vel­op­ment of coun­tries' broad­band com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture. The World Bank-fund­ed project ad­dress­es gaps in sub­ma­rine ca­ble in­fra­struc­ture and land­ing sta­tions, do­mes­tic back­bone net­works and na­tion­al In­ter­net ex­change points (IX­Ps).A to­tal al­lo­ca­tion of US$25 mil­lion is be­ing dis­bursed through the­CAR­CIP pro­gramme, in­clud­ing loans to the three coun­tries and a grant to the CTU, the Trinidad-based or­gan­i­sa­tion co­or­di­nat­ing the project.

Par­tic­i­pants at the meet­ing this week in­clud­ed Jac­in­ta Joseph, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Works, Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Phys­i­cal De­vel­op­ment and ICT, Grena­da; Philip Dal­sou, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of theP­ub­lic Ser­vice, In­for­ma­tion and Broad­cast­ing, St Lu­cia; Rox­anne John, CAR­CIP project co­or­di­na­tor, Min­istry of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines; and Em­bert Charles, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, ECTEL.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Caribbean Knowl­edge and Learn­ing Net­work (CKLN) were un­able to at­tend.

"Bring­ing the ter­ri­to­ries and the re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions to­geth­er at the ta­ble is just the first step. The ul­ti­mate aim is a com­pre­hen­sive, re­gion-wide ap­proach to the de­vel­op­ment of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works of the Caribbean. The lessons that we learn here will be of re­al val­ue to the en­tire re­gion," said Ju­nior McIn­tyre, the project co­or­di­na­tor for the CTU.


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