The launch of GT&T’S Emagine broadband service was receiving a lot of positive feedback from subscribers yesterday- a day after glitches dogged its launch.
Director of Marketing and Sales Wystan Robertson told Stabroek News that it seemed as though “things have settled down.” The launch was marred by several technical glitches which the company said it had been able to rectify using troubleshooting programmes. According to Robertson, most of the queries they are now receiving are from new users who want to subscribe to the emagine network. “So far there have been no reports of any issue … nothing to the scale of yesterday (Thursday),” he said, while adding that engineers were still monitoring the system.
Robertson had earlier stated that the internet speed had been notably fast when it was rolled out at midnight on Wednesday but by 8 am Thursday they began to receive complaints from the public.
Meanwhile, he reiterated that the roll out was only for the Georgetown to Beterver-wagting area with extension of the service along the East Bank Demerara to as far as Timehri and along the East Coast Demerara up to New Amsterdam to be in place by year end. The increase in bandwidth, which GT&T says expands the current data capacity offered by as much as four times, relies on the recently commissioned Suriname/Guyana SG –SGS submarine cable.
Robertson had said that they 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 that the SGS cable would immediately see residents in Georgetown and its environs having access to more bandwidth at cheaper prices. He had also pointed out that there were some geographical challenges the company would have to address over time if Guyanese countrywide were to benefit.
The deal for the cable system was inked between GT&T and Surinamese telecommunications company TELESUR in December 2008.
The cable is routed from Chaguaramas, Trinidad to a branching unit in the Atlantic from where it is then diverted to Georgetown and Paramaribo 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.
