GT&T celebrates 18 years of service to Guyana

Jan 25, 2009 News

…staff members will donate gift of life

The Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company is gearing to celebrate 18 years since it started serving the Guyanese nation.
This newspaper has learnt that the telephone giant will today be hosting a church service to commemorate the event, which will be officially celebrated on Wednesday.
Following the planned Games Night on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, the staff members of GT&T will make a blood donation to the National Blood Bank on Friday.

One of the many container exchanges which help to link Guyana

The donation of blood has always been considered a gift of life.
GT&T, ever since its arrival in Guyana, has made significant investment in technologically upgrading its network since commencing operations on January 28, 1991.
GT&T had accepted what was a massive challenge to rehabilitate, modernise and expand the country’s telecommunications facilities and services.
According to the company, it was a unique challenge.
“To understand the development and expansion of telecommunications service in Guyana, one must at first understand the geography of the country.”
Between its inception and now, GT&T boasts investment of millions of US dollars towards the modernization and expansion of the national telecommunications infrastructure and facilities.
This investment, according to the company, is reflected in the tremendous increase in the number of subscribers the network carries; in the sophisticated, state-of-the-art technologies that have been deployed; in the exciting, modern, feature-rich services these technologies support; and in all the advanced systems and processes that have been introduced to enhance customer experience.
“Today, Guyana has a telecommunications network that is comparable to any in the Caribbean and, indeed, the rest of the world.”
In the area of fibre optics, systems have been deployed, and fibre optic cables run from Georgetown to Diamond, to Beterverwagting, to Timehri, to Skeldon, to Linden, to Parika and Mahaicony, serving all communities in their paths.
These cables provide bandwidth and greater flexibility for use, and they will eventually be linked to form a self-healing ring which will allow traffic flow in either direction, and so ensure continuity in the event that the cables are damaged.
A special fibre optic ring encircles Georgetown to provide high-speed data services for the business community.
In the wireless sector, the company has had to be creative in order to meet the challenges of providing telephone services to the scattered population centres of Guyana, and it has pioneered the introduction of new technologies.
Northern Telecoms Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) solution, for example, was brought in during 1996 to be deployed specifically in the Essequibo region. Today, FWA has spread to the West Demerara, East Bank Demerara, North and South Ruimveldt and Berbice.
When the company started operations in 1991, there was one Earth Station at its Thomas Lands location to facilitate international traffic.
Since then, a similar Earth Station has been constructed at Beterverwagting, and two smaller ones established at Lethem and Port Kaituma. Another Earth Station is currently being installed at Mabaruma.
Demand Assignment Multiple Access (DAMA) sites have been set up at Port Kaituma, Mabaruma and Lethem to provide telephone service to the three hinterland areas which had very limited telephone service.
Connectivity was made possible through Intelsat’s global service and the network formed by the DAMA sites interfacing with each other.
The Submarine Fibre Optic Cable, which is anchored on the bed of the Demerara River, linking Georgetown to West Demerara, is another technological boon which the company has introduced.