On the first day of its launch, GT&T’s emagine broadband service experienced several glitches which the company has rectified as it attempts to deliver on its promise of providing increased bandwidth to its customers.
Wystan Robertson, Direc-tor of Marketing and Sales of the telecommunications company told Stabroek News yesterday that there were technical glitches, most of which were rectified by the telephone company utilizing trouble-shooting programmes.
He said the internet speed was noticeably fast when it was rolled out at midnight on Wednesday, but by 8 am yesterday the company began to receive complaints, as the public anticipated the upgrade. Robertson said customers in the Kingston area in the city were experiencing a particular problem in relation to the upgraded service but this was rectified by the company’s technicians.
He said that a server had acted up and during the day engineers were monitoring the service to ensure customers’ satisfaction. Robertson said some customers may have experienced problems relating to their individual systems, but according to him, GT&T is not relying on the notion that the problems are expected “teething” issues. The increase in bandwidth, which expands the current data capacity offered by the telephone company as much as four times, relies on the recently commissioned Suriname/Guyana SG –SGS submarine cable.
Royston Rachpaul, Finance Controller of the company told Stabroek News that the current upgrade, which serves customers in Georgetown and up to the village of Beterverwagting, East Coast Demerara, is being rolled out in phases, with South Ruimveldt, the East Bank Demerara including Timehri and New Amsterdam experiencing the emagine service before year end.
He said customers outside the catchment area where the service is being offered at the moment, should keep track of the company’s developmental plans. He said there have been complaints from customers in the out of service areas yesterday about the upgraded service and the company will work to satisfy all its customers over time.
Robertson said GT&T had carried out several successful tests involving some 100 customers prior to the launching of the service.
GT&T General Manager Yog Mahadeo had said in May this year that the SGS cable will immediately see residents in Georgetown and its environs having access to more bandwidth at cheaper prices, the cable had been successfully routed to Guyana and that the last month and a half has been identified as a period for “configuration and testing”.
Some amount of additional bandwidth would have been made available during this period Mahadeo said, adding that when the cable becomes completely operational this month, residents in Georgetown and some in Greater Georgetown will be the first to benefit.
He pointed out that there were some geographical challenges that the company will have to address over time if Guyanese all across the nation are to reap the full benefits of the cable, which will take time. He said that towards the end of this year and the first quarter of next year, GT&T will be moving to expand the operations of the cable farther east along the coast.
The deal for the cable system was inked between GT&T and Surinamese telecommunications company TELESUR in December 2008.
In January GT&T commissioned the shore-end landing of the SG-SCS, which has a capacity of 264 gigawaves, at the Kingston seawall. The project links the two countries through a state-of-the-art 1,200-kilometre (700-mile) submarine fibre optic cable connected to a worldwide network of similar cables through a landing station in Trinidad.
The cable is routed from Chaguaramas, Trinidad to a branching unit in the Atlantic from where it is then diverted to Georgetown and Parama-ribo in Suriname. The new cable offers 3,000 to 4,000 times more bandwidth than what is available through the Americas 11 cable and satellite link.
