T&T – Barbadian Telecom to Provide Services

The Telecommunications Authority of T&T announced that the Minister of Digital Transformation, Hassel Bacchus, had approved a recommendation from the T&T telecommunications regulator to grant ten-year con-cessions to a company named Neptune Communications.

The concessions allow the Barbados-based company, according to a notice published last Thursday, to operate a public international telecommunications network and a public domestic fixed wireless (via satellite) telecommunications network and public domestic fixed telecommunications services.

In an interview with the Business Guardian on Saturday, the CEO and founder of Neptune Communications, Julian Jordan, said right now the company is focused on providing broadband service, via satellite, to government agencies, state enterprises, and corporate entities. “The company was formed with a view to bringing resilient connectivity to national security, government, police, fire, emergency medical, and other services,” said Jordan, who added that the company hopes to roll out its service next month.

He referenced the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, in which terrorists linked to the Islamic ex-tremist group al Qaeda—founded by Osama bin Laden—hijacked four commercial passenger airplanes.

In the aftermath of those attacks, Jordan said the US passed a series of laws that made clear how important it was “for serious and real attention to be paid to this question of connectivity for those people and agencies who are supposed to run the critical infrastructure of the country. When all hell breaks loose, countries need to have communications platforms that allow for a country to reboot itself.”

He said 50 years ago, the post-crisis requirements were for power, water, shelter and food.

“Nowadays, you have to have connectivity. So Neptune Communications was formed to bring highly resilient, secure broadband to this part of the world,” said Jordan.

“We are not focused on providing these services to households just yet.”

The company intends to provide two services to its clients.

“One of them is satellite broadband communications services. That really revolves around delivering broadband access and related IT service to our customers,” Jordan said.

This involves the company providing highspeed, resilient or redundant connectivity

“straight out of the satellite in the sky” to support the corporate networks of the offices or business place of the customer.

He said Neptune Communications, which is a privately owned company, has 100 per cent of T&T under coverage at this time, “so any