Latest update February 16th, 2025 7:47 AM
Dec 19, 2012 News
– Digicel CEO opines
The high cost of broadband in Guyana is perhaps a key element that drives cell phone usage in Guyana.
This assumption was made by Chief Executive Officer of Digicel Guyana, Gregory Dean, as he responded to questions at the company’s recent end-of-year press conference.
To support his speculation, Dean made reference to the fact that in a lot of the other markets which Digicel operates, customers have access to cheap broadband services, thus the cell phone becomes a secondary medium to access the internet.
“In Guyana it (cell phone) is a primary medium for some people to access internet service. In a lot of the areas that we provide service, this is the only access to internet service, because the internet access is not widespread and then the cost per month many cannot afford,” Dean theorised.
The CEO asserted however, that this state of affairs is certainly not being touted by the company as an excuse for not offering better service. In fact, he noted that efforts are continually being made to provide customers with improved data service in order to meet the existing demand.
Based on feedback from customers, he said that there is a demand for speed of service “so what we have been looking at is what is the average usage for customers on the network and can we adequately meet the average usage.”
Initially, he disclosed that 30 megabytes of data was made available to customers, but then it was recognised that they were using more than that on the average day. Subsequent expansions saw the available data being increased to 50 megabytes.
“What we have been saying all the time is that we will keep monitoring performance and we will keep reviewing that policy but I think our intentions are not to ultimately limit persons in terms of what they can use but there is always going to be a pay off between speed of access and the amount of data people are utilising and it is a situation where you have a few customers whose usage is extremely high on the network.”
According to Dean, at the moment Digicel’s network cannot sustain those persons using over a gigabyte of data per day. He emphasised that “there is no way you can dimension a network to meet the needs of that person unless they are the only person in some community that is using data…I think it is the biggest challenge we have in how we provide adequate data service for our customers.”
The CEO related that at the moment customers are demanding something more than the available Edge provision, something that Digicel is closely monitoring. Considering other markets that Digicel has already been able to penetrate, Dean said that the ultimate decision is usually to divert to 4G or LTE or some other technology that allows customers even greater access in terms of data. However, he surmised that such undertakings are usually tied up with opinions of where the market is going.
“There are a lot of developments happening in the market, and I suppose all operators are kind of asking what the plan is for the telecommunication sector and I think the sooner that is clearly defined, the sooner it is that the operators in the market can start making bolder decisions.”
“We would love to be more aggressive in terms of some of the things that we are doing, whether it is rolling out to new areas, launching new services, looking at better data service for customers…those are some of the things we would love to do in the market.”
According to Dean, many customers are looking at access in and out of the country but currently there is a lot of uncertainty in this regard.
He nevertheless alluded to moves by Government to incorporate its own fibre optic cable, even as he disclosed that other operators had in the past looked in the same direction.
“Sometimes I think it is a grey area and investors are probably a bit reluctant to invest, so that is most likely the major issue. I think if you can have the cheaper bandwidth in and out of Guyana a lot of industries would flourish, not just the obvious telecommunication players, but all the industries in Guyana who are seeking cheaper bandwidth.”
Dean pointed to the fact that the first step in terms of providing data for customers is the amount of bandwidth available in and out of the country.
Moreover, he said that “until we see bandwidth developing and there is some competition and prices start dropping and access to that bandwidth develops, there will be some limiting factor and I think it is the same thing in terms of operators who want to do 4G or other services.”
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