TSTT announces $727M upgrade

TELECOMMUNICATIONS Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT) is involved in a $727 million capital expenditure drive to improve its network by the end of this year. Revealing this was chief executive officer Samuel Martin, in what could be his last public appearance as TSTT boss. He retires as the head of the country’s lone telecommunications company at the end of this month. Martin said the company was aware that any monopolist entering into a competitive environment knows there will be loss of market share. Knowing this, TSTT was moving towards improving its quality of customer service to its existing clientele. He was addressing a one-day seminar on “TSTT in a Liberalised Telecoms Environment,” hosted by the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Commerce at the Chamber’s building in Westmoorings yesterday.

In response to a query on how TSTT planned to keep its current market share, and the company’s plans for its existing customers, Martin said that while every company and individual have their desires, and what they would want to see happen, the reality is that TSTT did not have the financing to deal with everything. He noted that the company was looking at the various situations that exist, before allocating capital to deal with the problems in the order of priority. On the issue of migrating customers, Martin said the challenge they faced was whether the present service could be revised to retain customers. He noted, however, that the answer was no, “We would still lose customers.” Some of the proposed upgrades include the establishment of an additional 1,500 DSL sites at 57 new locations, improvements to existing and the establishment of additional retail stores, longer service hours outlets, implementation of e-cell for better indoor cell reception, and ensuring that every household has access to telephone service, whether land line, mobile or phone booths.

In addition, TSTT will launch a number of projects aimed at improving the quality of service and accessibility to customers’ accounts. One such project is the Next Generation Network Project (NGN), which will see upgrades in infrastructure around the country, and services provided by the company. This project will deal with core network to packet voice over internet protocol, high speed data availability, new services and the redesign of service provision processes, upgrade to redundant fibres to buildings, increased reliability of copper plants in order to reduce the root cause of faults, and a copper line reconciliation project. Another project in the works is the Customer Service Operation Centre, which will allow for the integration of all management platforms for data including voice, Internet and data, allow service level agreement and tracking, Internet Network Operation Centres, the introduction of online bill presentation and payments, as well as the introduction of additional content based services.

Executive director of service delivery at TSTT Bernard Mitchell said that the company had already done a trial of the e-business solution to accessing telephone services like billing information, noting that by the end of 2004 this service will be made available to all TSTT customers. He stated that although these upgrades were being conducted, the key to success for TSTT lay with an improvement in the corporate culture of the company’s employees. “This is not only about hard work, it is also about courage to make the necessary transition. This goes beyond customer service — it is all about culture. “We need to change the culture of the people working within the organisation,” Mitchell stated. Mitchell also noted that the company needed to enhance its operational efficiency, improve customer service and maintain existing services while generating new ones in order to ensure customer satisfaction, especially since the company intended to “defend our market share with all our might.”