Dear Editor,
I’m surprised that the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) continues to propagate to the Guyanese mobile telephone subscribers about the best network and strongest signal. This is quite contrary to the fact.
On Friday at the Guyana National Stadium at Providence, I tried to make several calls on my mobile telephone to other GT&T subscribers. I continuously received drop calls, I was unable to hear the calling party, and calling party was unable to hear me. In addition I tried accessing a particular number fifteen times within a two hour period. I was unable to access this number with errors such as network busy, unable to access network, and in many cases it was just dialing to the network for minutes after minutes to no avail. Text messages were no different, errors in sending and long delays in receiving.
I’m willing to provide the numbers of the instruments to verify these claims. GT&T can themselves refer to their call logs to also verify.
GT&T needs to pay more attention to improving the capability and capacity of their network, rather than working to further populate a congested network.
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome mobile service provider Digicel, and encourage them to live up to their expectations of providing quality service to customers.
Yours faithfully,
Ronald Harsawack
Editor’s note
We sent a copy of this letter to GT&T for their comments and received the following response from Mr Oscar Clarke, Assistant Public Relations Officer:
“We are aware of the inconvenience experienced by those cellular users who attended the game in mid-February at the Guyana National Stadium.
If only GT&T had been advised of the match and the anticipated attendance of thousands, we would have made arrangements to put in place our cellular on wheels which has been acquired specifically for those mass events.
But GT&T has in place a more permanent solution to the problem.
The fact is that even as that match was being played, work was in progress on the construction of facilities to the north eastern side of the stadium to provide efficient GSM service to persons in the stadium and that area of the east bank.
The landline and mobile exchanges installed there will meet the demands of the stadium administration, the international media, the new hotels and businesses around Providence and the thousands of spectators who will converge on the area during the Cricket World Cup.
The formal commissioning has been planned for March 21.
Mr Harsawack may be assured that day after day every effort is being made by GT&T to further improve the capability and capacity of its network to maintain its status as the best with the strongest signal.”
