Why Choose Trinidad & Tobago: ICT in T&T: Meeting the Needs of International Investors
Trinidad & Tobago is undoubtedly a society capable of supporting the technology needs of any potential investor. The Communications infrastructure is well-developed for the transport of any data that one might want to send and receive locally or internationally, and developed IT systems are widely available to support modern requirements.
While full deregulation in the Communications industry only took place in the late 1990s, much of it started happening in the 1980s, firstly in the Enterprise space. The average Enterprise customer, who now had a choice of vendors for services previously supplied by the monopoly, would begin researching the various options and make a choice based on competitive capabilities against the price tag. Following this Enterprise communications choice, with market deregulation, the Enterprise customer would now have a choice of service providers which has grown to four distinct options in as little as 10 years offering both local and international trunk connections. Additionally, there are other vendors who offer local Wide Area Network (WAN) connectivity within T&T’s borders. Enterprise communications solutions with a number of competing providers include, just to name a few, the following: - IP and SIP Telephony/PBX - Certified Category 6 and 6A Structured Cabling using TIA/ EIA 568B/C standards - Advanced Switching & Routing - Wireless LANs The more established local providers and integrators will also provide full certification credentials to confirm their capability. In the wider communications environment, all the latest, including 3G, transmission technologies exist. Some of these are: - ISDN-PRI - Metro-Ethernet - Wimax (Wireless) - SIP Connectivity - Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) - Mobile Internet
62 • Business Trinidad & Tobago
Rates are quite competitive and the choice of technologies is sure to meet every requirement. Private network and Internet bandwidths (throughputs) can achieve up to 10 Mbps. With some private data radio solutions, achieving around 50 Mbps is a possibility, if required. 4G is probably less than a year away. In the IT sphere, IBM ruled the roost in the early days, as it did everywhere else in the world. Over the last 10 to 15 years though, with the rapid change in server technology, many companies took advantage of faster speeds and increased efficiencies. Corporate Trinidad & Tobago began demanding the latest technology, following the USA in building data centres, although on a smaller scale. Various local companies now offer Co-Location Services and Disaster Recovery Sites to compliment data centres. Some companies offer network monitoring, even down to the desktop. Trinidad & Tobago is on the verge of embracing “Cloud” technology as well as “Software-as-a-Service” (SaaS). Many major vendors have certified local resellers in-country. These vendors include (in alphabetical order): - Avaya/Nortel - Cisco - HP/3Com - IBM - Microsoft - Oracle/Sun Microsystems Trinidadian and Tobagonians, while reluctant at first, have fully embraced mobile technology. With the proliferation of cellular telephones, Blackberries and I-Phones, all of Trinidad & Tobago is talking, texting, emailing and “apping” on the go. Mobility now includes extending the enterprise environment to the mobile device, integrating many day-to-day office functions