An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Re­port­ing from Pun­ta Cana, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic

The Caribbean faces a widen­ing dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture and in­vest­ment gap that could un­der­mine its abil­i­ty to com­pete in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI), fin­tech, dig­i­tal gov­ern­ment and oth­er emerg­ing sec­tors, CAN­TO C9 Chair Lisa Agard has warned.

Speak­ing to the Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Or­gan­i­sa­tions’ (CAN­TO) 41st An­nu­al Con­fer­ence and Trade Ex­hi­bi­tion in Pun­ta Cana, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Agard said the re­gion must treat dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture as crit­i­cal eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture and find new ways to fund net­work ex­pan­sion.

She point­ed to da­ta show­ing that about 49 per cent of peo­ple across the Caribbean re­main of­fline, de­spite on­ly about 10 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion be­ing out­side the ge­o­graph­ic cov­er­age of mo­bile net­works.

“This tells you that peo­ple are of­fline for an­oth­er rea­son, be­cause why would you be in the foot­print of a net­work and not con­nect?” Agard asked.

The chal­lenge, she ex­plained, ex­tends be­yond the price of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices. The af­ford­abil­i­ty of de­vices, dig­i­tal skills, and con­sumers’ abil­i­ty to use smart de­vices ef­fec­tive­ly are al­so con­tribut­ing to the re­gion’s us­age gap.

For Trinidad and To­ba­go, the af­ford­abil­i­ty of con­nec­tiv­i­ty it­self ap­pears less sig­nif­i­cant than in many oth­er Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries. Agard not­ed that broad­band spend­ing in T&T is about 1.07 per cent of gross na­tion­al in­come per capi­ta, well be­low the in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark of two per cent.

The da­ta there­fore rais­es ques­tions about whether the cost of smart­phones and oth­er de­vices, rather than the cost of mo­bile ser­vices, is pre­vent­ing more peo­ple from com­ing on­line.

Agard al­so high­light­ed the re­gion’s lag in 5G de­ploy­ment. Cur­rent 5G adop­tion in the Caribbean is es­ti­mat­ed at 10 per cent, with adop­tion pro­ject­ed to reach on­ly 35 per cent by 2030, com­pared with 57 per cent glob­al­ly and 50 per cent in Latin Amer­i­ca.

Bridg­ing that gap will re­quire sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment. The es­ti­mat­ed in­vest­ment need­ed to close the re­gion’s 5G gap is about US$1 bil­lion. If the Caribbean is to achieve the goal of a gi­ga­bit so­ci­ety by 2030, in­clud­ing wide­spread 5G and fi­bre-to-the-home con­nec­tiv­i­ty, the in­vest­ment re­quire­ment could rise to be­tween US$9 bil­lion and US$12 bil­lion.

T&T, how­ev­er, is po­si­tioned rel­a­tive­ly well on broad­band af­ford­abil­i­ty, Agard not­ed, sug­gest­ing that the coun­try’s fo­cus should in­creas­ing­ly be on in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment, dig­i­tal in­clu­sion and en­sur­ing that cit­i­zens have ac­cess to ca­pa­ble de­vices and the skills need­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

The pres­sure on net­works is al­so grow­ing rapid­ly.

Agard cit­ed es­ti­mates that da­ta us­age in the re­gion has in­creased by about 500 per cent over the past four years. Av­er­age month­ly da­ta con­sump­tion per sub­scriber, cur­rent­ly around 3.3 gi­ga­bytes, is ex­pect­ed to rise to about 15 gi­ga­bytes by 2030

.Agard said CAN­TO be­lieves the an­swer re­quires greater co­op­er­a­tion across the dig­i­tal ecosys­tem, in­clud­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions op­er­a­tors, gov­ern­ments and hy­per­scalers.

She point­ed to Eu­rope’s ap­proach, where pol­i­cy­mak­ers have en­cour­aged ecosys­tem par­tic­i­pants to col­lab­o­rate on net­work chal­lenges through com­mer­cial ne­go­ti­a­tions, with me­di­a­tion avail­able where nec­es­sary.

For the Caribbean, Agard be­lieves a sim­i­lar col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach could help ad­dress the re­gion’s con­nec­tiv­i­ty, cov­er­age and in­vest­ment chal­lenges.

CAN­TO has al­ready be­gun rais­ing the is­sue at the re­gion­al po­lit­i­cal lev­el. Through its mem­ber­ship in the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion, the as­so­ci­a­tion has brought the im­por­tance of con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in dig­i­tal net­works to the at­ten­tion of Cari­com.

Agard said there is now recog­ni­tion among Caribbean pol­i­cy­mak­ers that dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment are close­ly con­nect­ed.

The next step, she not­ed, is to take the dis­cus­sion di­rect­ly to the hy­per­scalers and be­gin build­ing the part­ner­ships need­ed to sup­port fu­ture net­work in­vest­ment.

“Dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture is no longer a nar­row telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions is­sue. It is re­al­ly foun­da­tion­al eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture,” Agard main­tained.

She de­scribed ICT in­fra­struc­ture as the cir­cu­la­to­ry sys­tem of the dig­i­tal econ­o­my, with da­ta as its lifeblood and net­works as its ar­ter­ies.