An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Re­port­ing from Pun­ta Cana,

Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic

Caribbean busi­ness­es must stop con­fus­ing the adop­tion of new tech­nol­o­gy with dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and fo­cus in­stead on whether tech­nol­o­gy is solv­ing re­al prob­lems, im­prov­ing lives and strength­en­ing eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness.

That was the mes­sage from Flow Vice Pres­i­dent and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Si­mone Mar­tin-Sul­gan and Monique Lis­ter, di­rec­tor of le­gal ser­vices at Lib­er­ty Caribbean, dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion yes­ter­day at the 41st CAN­TO con­fer­ence in Pun­ta Cana, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. CAN­TO is the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Sul­gan said busi­ness­es of­ten talk about dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion with­out ac­tu­al­ly chang­ing how peo­ple op­er­ate.

“Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion isn’t just about tech­nol­o­gy. It’s about what’s pos­si­ble. It’s about re­al­ly chang­ing lives,” she said.

“If we take a process and we put it on­line, that’s digi­ti­sa­tion. If we take a process and we im­prove it by mak­ing it au­to­mat­ed, that’s called op­ti­mi­sa­tion. But if we haven’t changed the way peo­ple look at things, do things, then we re­al­ly haven’t re­al­ly trans­formed,” said Mar­tin-Sul­gan.

She said tech­nol­o­gy should be viewed as an en­abler and ar­gued that the Caribbean’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion must be linked to eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

“For the Caribbean, if I look at it, for us, ul­ti­mate­ly, it’s an eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment agen­da. At the end of the day, that’s what it is,” she said.

She point­ed to the re­gion’s small mar­kets, ex­pen­sive in­fra­struc­ture and dif­fi­cul­ty achiev­ing scale, say­ing tech­nol­o­gy, en­er­gy and fi­nanc­ing must be brought to­geth­er to re­move struc­tur­al bar­ri­ers to com­pet­i­tive­ness.

“We start­ed to look at it through a lot of si­los,” Sul­gan said. “It’s about how do we put it all to­geth­er, re­al­iz­ing that we’re now start­ing to cre­ate the op­er­at­ing sys­tem for mod­ern economies.”

Lis­ter cau­tioned busi­ness­es against adopt­ing tech­nol­o­gy sim­ply be­cause a new prod­uct or tool is avail­able.

“We have to step back and say, is this ac­tu­al­ly help­ing me to solve a prob­lem that I have? Or am I just cre­at­ing a prob­lem so that I can use this tech­nol­o­gy and say that it’s be­ing help­ful?” she said.

Lis­ter, whose Lib­er­ty Group par­ent com­pa­ny in­cludes Bermu­da util­i­ty Bel­co, said the com­pa­ny’s roll­out of ad­vanced me­ter­ing in­fra­struc­ture across Bermu­da has al­lowed it to mon­i­tor en­er­gy use in re­al time and help cus­tomers im­prove con­sump­tion.

But she said small Caribbean mar­kets face a dif­fi­cult bal­anc­ing act.

“We have big city ex­pec­ta­tions in a small town size,” Lis­ter said.

Mar­tin-Sul­gan al­so ar­gued that women must be in­volved much ear­li­er in the de­vel­op­ment of tech­nol­o­gy projects, rather than be­ing brought in af­ter de­ci­sions have al­ready been made.

“Don’t in­vite us to the ta­ble af­ter you’ve al­ready de­cid­ed what you’re go­ing to solve,” she said, adding: “You’ve wast­ed a lot of cap­i­tal in­vest­ing in so­lu­tions that sim­ply do not work for 50 per cent of your pop­u­la­tion.”

The dis­cus­sion echoed the wider mes­sage de­liv­ered by CAN­TO chair­man Dr Del­reo New­man at Sun­day night’s open­ing: con­nec­tiv­i­ty alone will not make the Caribbean com­pet­i­tive.

“This year’s theme is more than a slo­gan. It is a chal­lenge: ‘El­e­vate the Caribbean: From Con­nec­tiv­i­ty to Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness,’” New­man said.

“Com­pet­i­tive­ness be­gins when con­nec­tiv­i­ty changes lives. When it low­ers busi­ness costs, cre­ates jobs, strength­ens lo­cal en­ter­pris­es, pro­tects cit­i­zens and ex­pands op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

New­man called for the re­gion to move “from ac­cess to im­pact”, “from in­fra­struc­ture to re­silience” and “from na­tion­al si­los to re­gion­al scale”.

He al­so warned that the Caribbean re­mains too frag­ment­ed and moves too slow­ly, urg­ing gov­ern­ments, reg­u­la­tors, util­i­ties, banks and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies to fo­cus on ex­e­cu­tion.

CAN­TO sec­re­tary gen­er­al Tere­sa Wank­ins re­in­forced that mes­sage, say­ing the con­fer­ence should be judged by its out­comes rather than its at­ten­dance.

“The suc­cess of CAN­TO 2026 will not be mea­sured by the num­ber of del­e­gates in this room. It will be mea­sured by what changes be­cause we were here,” she said.

Wank­ins urged del­e­gates to “build com­mit­ments”, “set ob­jec­tives” and “fix time­lines”.

New­man closed with a chal­lenge to the re­gion: “Now we must de­cide whether con­nec­tiv­i­ty will re­main an achieve­ment we cel­e­brate, or be­come the foun­da­tion on which we com­pete.”