Telecommunications services provider Merit Communications Ltd expects to complete the main build-out of its fibre-optic ring in Kingston within 30 days, allowing it to provide data and voice services to its corporate customers.

The company says it also hopes within six months to extend the ring further towards the Norman Manley International Airport - at the eastern tip of Kingston.
Merit has already spent millions of dollars to lay down its main ring - in New Kingston and downtown. Papine is now under construction.

Andrew Fazio, Merit's vice-president of sales and marketing, told the Business Observer that the ring around Papine, on which work began in August, was expected to be completed by mid-November.
Merit, which offers Internet and international voice services, will use the capacity and flexibility that the ring will provide it, as a lure for other potential corporate customers -like the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) and the University of the West Indies (UWI).

"The Papine ring will connect to the JSE through Fiscal Services - the government technology provider," explained Fazio. "We are still talking with UWI. We do not have anything in play right now ...and we are looking for other businesses in that area."
Merit connects the fibre from a combination of its own poles and space it shares on existing utility poles. It is one of the few telecommunication firms that has a fibre ring in the corporate area.

Fibre provides very fast and reliable technology, but it is expensive to build-out.
"It is costing Merit multiples of millions of US dollars but I cannot give an exact figure, but we are spending more in our infrastructure," said Fazio.

In January, Merit told the Business Observer that it had access to US$20 million from its US-based parent, giving it the ability lay down over 100 kilometres of fibre across the island.
The parent, Merit Communications, is an American real estate, cable and Internet company that reportedly had turnover of US$350 million (J$21 billion) last year. Its chairman is Kenneth Picinich.

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