Company shares its digital transformation journey
NASSAU, BAHAMAS — BTC CEO André Foster recently participated as a panelist in the Mobile World Congress 5G Caribbean Virtual Summit held on July 1.
The panel hosted by Carlos Bosch, head of technology at GSMA North America, focused on digital transformation in the Caribbean. Other panelists included Aileen Corrigan, Digicel chief digital officer, and Mike Antonius, CEO of Telesur.
Foster shared his views on digital transformation in The Bahamas, stating: “Our digital transformation continues to be an amazing journey for us and for our customers. I look at digital transformation from both the customer’s and the operator’s perspective.
“As an operator, I’m laser-focused on making sure that we have resiliency and a scalable infrastructure so we can enable connectivity wherever our customers are. We’ve built a fiber-rich network, not just connecting every home but connecting our islands, through our Bahamas Domestic Submarine Network.
“As technology continues to evolve, our customers will benefit from the efficiency coming into the network. This results in a transition from infrastructure-based solutions to software-based solutions and software-defined networks.
“These efficiencies bring the innovation that makes life easier for our customers. Some of these new AI-driven innovations include the use of WhatsApp, not just for mobile top-up but also for customer care.
“From the customers’ perspective, we’re really trying to make access to technology as simple and convenient as possible. By that I mean we’ve introduced convergence, which is the ability to combine our fixed and mobile networks to bring the best value for our customers.
“For us, it is ensuring that our customers have the best-connected home and the best mobile network at the most competitive price point possible.”
Within the first six months of 2021, BTC customers have benefited from the continued fiber-to-the-home build with speeds starting at 100Mbps, the investment in green containerized Central Offices, to the infusion of artificial intelligence in its customer service.
Foster said: “We strongly believe that our robust telecoms infrastructure is the underpinning of digital transformation. We want to give a 360-degree experience and provide our customers with seamless connectivity, whether at home or on the go.
“Bringing together our fixed and mobile services allows them to adopt more. The pandemic has no doubt unleashed many digital entrepreneurs, many of whom depend on our broadband product to conduct their business. As the leading telecommunications provider, we’re enabling connectivity and we’re focused on providing as much capacity as they need.”
During the past year-and-a-half, BTC doubled broadband speeds twice, initially doubling the entry speed from 25Mbps to 50Mbps. Most recently, the company again doubled entry-level speeds from 50Mbps to 100Mpbs. These complimentary upgrades came at no added cost to the customer.
Speaking on the road to 5G mobile services, Foster said: “BTC is progressive with its technology. There’s definitely a future towards 5G, but as we consider our economy and what our customers need today, we see that there’s still a lot of life left in our LTE network.
“The transition to 5G will happen by natural attrition. There are a lot of things we’re doing on the existing network, working to get our VOLTE deployment up and running. We’re keeping pace with the rest of the world and right now we’re focused on where to place the investment to ensure that we provide access to connectivity to all citizens of The Bahamas.”
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