Renu­ka Singh

The new Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee ap­point­ed to eval­u­ate the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) is ex­pect­ed to meet this week to dis­cuss the com­pa­ny’s fu­ture.

Chair of the com­mit­tee, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is did not give a spe­cif­ic date for the first meet­ing dur­ing a brief text ex­change with Guardian Me­dia but said she would pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on the com­mit­tee’s find­ings af­ter that meet­ing.

Ear­ly last month, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said Cab­i­net had se­lect­ed sev­er­al mem­bers to form the com­mit­tee but said then that it was too ear­ly to say whether the Gov­ern­ment was go­ing to di­vest its 51 per cent stake in TSTT. He said the man­date of the com­mit­tee is to de­ter­mine whether the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny was fit for pur­pose. How­ev­er, there are re­ports that the com­mit­tee has been asked to de­ter­mine whether it serves the pub­lic in­ter­est for Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue be­ing a ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er in the com­pa­ny.

The par­tial­ly state-owned com­pa­ny has fall­en far from grace. Once the bench­mark for high-pay­ing jobs, TSTT has been forced to cut hun­dreds of jobs over the years. Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh re­cent­ly asked Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley whether the com­pa­ny had se­cured a $476 mil­lion loan to fa­cil­i­tate its re­trench­ment ex­er­cise.

At the time the Prime Min­is­ter said TSTT re­quired fund­ing for its re­struc­tur­ing. The com­pa­ny had re­fused to con­firm the num­ber of em­ploy­ees set to be re­trenched.

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU) said some 573 work­ers were ear­marked for dis­missal but TSTT re­fut­ed that fig­ure and said it had not made any de­ter­mi­na­tion as to the num­ber of work­ers that would lose jobs.

TSTT will con­tin­ue to im­ple­ment the fol­low­ing projects for 2022:

° Wire­less Line of Busi­ness: This di­vi­sion com­pris­es all wire­less ser­vices and in­cludes broad­band, mo­bile, fixed wire­less ac­cess (WT­Tx) and broad­cast TV.

• Mo­bile—re­spon­si­ble for a full range of mo­bile ser­vices in­clud­ing mo­bile voice (pre­paid, post­paid, roam­ing, SMS) and all mo­bile da­ta;

• Fixed Wire­less Ser­vice—re­spon­si­ble for broad­band, en­ter­tain­ment, and voice ser­vices over WT­Tx; and

• DVBT Ser­vice—re­spon­si­ble for broad­cast TV ser­vices.

Broad­band: TSTT’s broad­band strat­e­gy con­tin­ues to be a two-prong ap­proach, us­ing a com­bi­na­tion of wired fi­bre to the home (FT­TH) and Fixed Wire­less Ser­vices (WT­Tx). Ac­cord­ing to the SEIP, TSTT is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue to make “sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal in­vest­ment in fi­bre and its wire­less broad­band in­fra­struc­ture, ex­pand­ing both the num­ber of sites and net­work ca­pac­i­ties through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Through these in­vest­ments, TSTT has mi­grat­ed 100K res­i­den­tial cus­tomers from its aged lega­cy cop­per plant of which 59,000 were to its wire­less fixed ac­cess net­work and 41,000 cus­tomers to its FT­TH net­work,” the SEIP said.

Un­der the mo­bile ban­ner, the TSTT al­so con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in both the ex­pan­sion in the num­ber of cell sites and ca­pac­i­ty im­prove­ments to ex­ist­ing sites lead­ing to an over­all im­prove­ment in the qual­i­ty of ser­vice with im­proved cov­er­age and da­ta rates through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The es­ti­mat­ed cost for the Wire­less Line of Busi­ness has been re­vised from $2,365.7 mil­lion to $1,753.3 mil­lion. The es­ti­mat­ed ex­pen­di­ture for the pe­ri­od April to Sep­tem­ber 2021 is $50.2 mil­lion and $58.8 mil­lion for fis­cal 2022,” the SEIP said.

In 2016, the com­pa­ny bor­rowed some $1.9 bil­lion to help with its ex­pan­sion. In 2017, the com­pa­ny pur­chased Massy Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, now re­named Am­plia, for $255 mil­lion. At the time of pur­chase, TSTT said there was a five-year plan which was sup­posed to cul­mi­nate this year.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2022 SEIP, Am­plia Com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­tin­ues to in­vest in the de­ploy­ment of fi­bre in­fra­struc­ture and to date, Am­plia passed 148,463 homes and con­nect­ed 41,004 cus­tomers with fi­bre ser­vices.

The es­ti­mat­ed cost of the project was re­vised from $378.8 mil­lion to $291.1 mil­lion. The es­ti­mat­ed ex­pen­di­ture for the pe­ri­od April to Sep­tem­ber 2021 is $25.5 mil­lion and $18.3 mil­lion for fis­cal 2022.