Although mobile phones still have the lion’s share of the telecommunications market, broadband service is fast gaining ground.

In the last financial year, the broadband service of Cable and Wireless expanded its customer base in the Cayman Islands by over 700 percent. And this was on top of exceptional growth the previous year. This type of growth is normally experienced in the start up phases of a new product or service offering, but C&W has been offering broadband service for five years.

The Vice President of Caribbean Broadband Consumer Markets of Cable and Wireless, Alee Fa’amoe, talked about the converging trends in communication technology and how it has impacted the Cayman Islands as well as the Caribbean.

“Broadband DSL in the Cayman Islands has the highest penetration per capita throughout the Caribbean and even the US,” said Mr Fa’amoe.

“One driving factor is the high PC penetration of personal computers. Another factor is the high per capita income. It is an indication of the strength of this economy. And in a strong economy people can afford more gizmos.

“There is also a higher penetration of mobile phones and personal computers here and those things go in lock-step.”

Although Broadband has been available for several years, Mr Fa’amoe explained that businesses took a step back from the Internet after the technology bubble burst in 2000.

“Businesses were asking how much of this is hype and how much of this is real? And how much should I invest in this online stuff?” he noted.

“A couple of things emerged in that every business has an IT infrastructure whether it is one desktop computer or a network. And businesses have to be connected to the rest of the world for email, back up data, collaboration and getting access to information. And smaller businesses can afford a dedicated connection using DSL,” he added.

Mr Fa’amoe noted that C&W provides service to numerous small population countries in the Caribbean including the Cayman Islands. Because many Caribbean countries are not self-sufficient – being connected to the outside world is critical. And for this country the nature of the offshore banking and insurance industry and even the tourist industry lends itself to being connected.

“Greater bandwidth connectivity enables businesses to stay connected to vendors, customers and employees,” added Mr Fa’amoe.

“These are not pie in the sky concepts. These are things that have been emerging after the Internet, but this is a solid requirement of the broadband era. The old days of hard connections from A to B are fading away,” said Mr Fa’amoe.

One example of businesses staying connected to both vendors and customers is when a travel agent gets a call on a cell phone from a regular customer. With an online provider, the travel agent can access information, and service customers at any geographic location so the travel agent is not limited to the office.

An interesting thing about the broadband market pointed out by Mr Fa’amoe is that it is consumers, not businesses that make up the largest portion of the customer base.

There are numerous factors driving consumer demand in the Caribbean. The primary driver is that people simply want to communicate. So as prices of both personal computers and broadband service go down – more people are able to afford it. 

“There are several islands in the Eastern Caribbean that you can buy a laptop for US$800 with a DSL connection and they are very popular,” he said.

And setting up equipment is getting simpler.

“As technology has become more accessible to consumers there are three strong trends that have emerged” he said.

Email is much faster then regular post and inexpensive. Digital photography is very popular and people want to share their photos on the Internet and colour printers to print photos have become affordable.

Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) has also emerged as a consumer product, which uses broadband technology to make long distance and overseas phones calls at bargain rates.

In the US, consumers can go to Best Buy or Circuit City, buy a VOIP box and take it home and have VOIP immediately.

This technology emerged in an era when consumers were trying to find ways around expensive overseas calls and much of the telecommunications industry in the Caribbean was being liberalised.

C&W introduced its VOIP product, known as Netspeak, one year ago in the Cayman Islands. Netspeak tapped into a market that wanted to make overseas calls for a monthly rate. Since the product launch of Netspeak it has been rolled out to numerous Caribbean islands.

Mr Fa’amoe addressed the potential of Netspeak cannibalising other services.

“We are seeing more penetration of existing markets. People who are using Netspeak were avoiding making international calls until Netspeak came online.

“It has gotten to a point for service providers that if you don’t offer a VOIP product you are never going to get certain customers. So it became a competitive necessity. In some Islands it has been very successful,” he said.

But he is frank about VOIP being a best effort service. It will not always have the same quality as a fixed line phone. Making a call from a fixed line phone reserves a channel, which belongs to the caller for the duration of the call. VOIP uses the Internet so a phone call is fighting for bandwidth so there is no guaranteed channel.

One surprise in introducing Netspeak is how much the older generation has embraced this technology. Because it was just another box that plugged into the DSL there was no programming involved or software to install.

Netspeak service was rolled out to Anguilla last week. The British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos are next.

It is also adding local call and 911 support to the Eastern Caribbean. (Local and 911 support was available in Cayman from the start of the service.)

Plans are also in the works to introduce a business version of Netspeak.

“Emerging trends will be driven by consumer demand for more customised entertainment content said Mr Fa’amoe.”

One trend he explained centres around personal broadband, enabling consumers to connect anywhere.

There is an increasing demand to download movies, videos and news in multiple formats anywhere in the world. Another element will be access to VOIP connection through hotspots and then consumers will not have to wait until they get home to make overseas calls.

This will enable the on-the-go consumer to be connected at the same time.

Mr Fa’amoe acknowledged there is inherent demand for an iPod phone as well, but phone technology has not caught up to iPod generation yet

“The next step in technology is speech recognition and then you will be able to get away from the a phone dial pad. And Mobile phones will become more of an access device for broadband,” he added.

shurna@caymannetnews.com