Bridgetown, Barbados - In an effort to strengthen and centralise its Caribbean network, integrated telecom provider Cable & Wireless (C&W) will be spending some US$250 million to improve its offerings to its Caribbean customers.

To that end it has established a Network Operating Centre (NOC) in Bridgetown, Barbados, which will serve to unify networks across the region, creating greater efficiencies in management and fault resolution.

Left to right: Barbados' Minister of Housing and Lands, Reginald Farley; CEO, Cable & Wireless International Harris Jones; CEO, Cable & Wireless, Caribbean and the Americas Chris Hetherington; and Chief Technology Officer, Cable & Wireless Paul Heun at the ribbon-cutting ceremony to officially open the Network Operations Centre based in Bridgetown, Barbados.

It will monitor C&W's fixed line, mobile and broadband networks, and their global interconnections from one location. This new centre will measure the performance of its Caribbean networks, for example, call set-up and completion, dropped calls and network availability. The new NOC will detect, report and record any faults in any of C&W's Caribbean networks, enabling the team to diagnose and resolve issues. This technological nerve centre, manned by 30 professionals, came in at a cost of over US$5 million.

Speaking at the launch of the NOC last week in Barbados, Chief Executive of C&W (Americas and the Caribbean), Chris Hetherington, said: "We now have full visibility of what our customers are actually experiencing. We can see everything that is working well. If there is a problem we can respond fast and fix it. We can now act before a customer even knows there is a problem. We can do it faster, better and more efficiently than ever before. We can monitor and protect our entire Caribbean network from right here."

The regional CEO went on to add that the new NOC is future-fitted to enable deployment of strategic technical upgrades across Cable&Wireless' businesses.

"This NOC is timely as we move toward a Next Generation Network (NGN) infrastructure and further coveraged and managed services. We can offer robust data networks which means we can combine and carry voice (fixed and mobile), data and streamed data. The beauty of this is that we no longer need separate networks to do this. It is a big step forward and is consistent with telecom technology."

Cable & Wireless has placed a great deal of emphasis on broadband in light of the growth it has witnessed in that area. Earlier this month it introduced upgraded speeds, new packages and a new pan-regional brand, Cable & Wireless Broadband.

The British-based telecom giant is reporting that its Caribbean customers have experienced at least a 75 per cent increase in the speed of their broadband service in the course of a week. The aim is to lower prices and have faster speeds.

CEO of Cable & Wireless International and Hetherington's boss, Harris Jones, said the NOC will hold its Caribbean operations together and maximise its investment as it goes about putting in place the best network in the Caribbean.
"We believe that broadband is the future of the fixed line network. The old traditional telephone system that people had in their homes is giving way to Voice over IP (VoIP) and there is no question that access to the Internet is absolutely paramount to any country wishing to stay-up-to date with technological advances.

"I joined Cable & Wireless three years ago and there was a view in the Caribbean that Cable & Wireless was not fulfilling its obligations to make sure its networks were aggressive enough to stand with the rest of the world. Today that is no longer the case. As of last week as a minimum standard across all our businesses across the world, our broadband services will have a minimum speed of one megabyte. Right now the US telecoms business is a US$140-billion industry but you can get faster speeds at a cheaper cost right here in the Caribbean. Broadband is not a nice-to-have service. It is a must-have service. Here in the Caribbean it is important to note that our network improvement took place when the volume of usage increased by 250 per cent."

Cable & Wireless generated about US$3 in revenues this financial year and Hetherington took the opportunity to say that close to half of the international company's revenues came from the Caribbean. He went on to say that the region which he is responsible for - the Americas and the Caribbean - was responsible for about 70 per cent of the parent company's overall revenue. Panama accounted for 20 per cent of that while the Caribbean contributed the remainder.

Cable & Wireless' Barbados operations released its annual report last week which reveals a turnover of Bds$371 million for the financial year ended March 31, 2007. A 15 per cent growth in cell phone customers and a 73 per cent increase largely drove this four per cent growth over the previous year's results in broadband customers.

This compares with Jamaica (who recently lost its CEO Rodney Davis), where for the first quarter ended June 30, 2007 C&WJ reported revenues of J$6 billion producing an after-tax loss of J$28 million, the first loss in its history. Operating profit fell by 69 per cent. Alarmingly administrative and marketing expenses rose by J$500 million (42 per cent) over the previous quarter.

Cable & Wireless is now looking to move toward an all-IP Next Generation Network infrastructure throughout all its worldwide operations. What will this mean?

1. When all fixed telephony is VoIP the company will be able to tell immediately if a customer doesn't have a dial tone.
2.Its networks will use power more efficiently and need less of it.
3.Its equipment will be less cumbersome and expensive to maintain and will require less space.
4. New applications and technologies can be installed more quickly.

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