By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) plans to introduce its Long Term Evolution (LTE) network within the first three months of 2013, the company’s chief executive telling Tribune Business yesterday that the full roll-out would require 12-18 months.

Geoff Houston, who was a speaker at the ninth annual Abaco Business Outlook conference, said the LTE network would be 10 times faster than BTC’s 4G system.

“Once we finish 4G we want to move quickly to the next generation and put LTE in place,” Mr Houston said.

“We got our spectrum sorted out with URCA and we expect to start rolling out LTE through next year. We made a commitment as part of our spectrum license to provide coverage across the islands.

“It’s going to be up to 10 times faster than 4G and it’s going to keep the Bahamas very much at the forefront of all this new technology.”

Mr Houston added: “The 4G network in terms of capital investment is about $42-$44 million. The LTE network is going to be not the same, but another significant amount on that; it’s millions of dollars that will be invested into the LTE.

“LTE is going to go into places where there is more high capacity demand, so you wouldn’t expect to see LTE right across the network, but in the majority of places where our customers are we would have LTE available.

“We are in the final stages now of our supply contract with a supplier, and I would expect to start building it certainly by January. Hopefully we would bring it into service in the first three months of next year. To get the whole thing rolled out is probably another 12-18 months.”

Mr Houston said BTC was in the process of putting the finishing touches on its 4G network.

“Right now we are just doing the finishing touches in the Family Islands. We are on the finishing touches, still completing the optimisation on the larger islands. That should more or less be done by next month,” he added.

Mr Houston also said BTC was four-six weeks away from launching its first franchise store on Grand Bahama.

“That is something we have been working hard on over the last 12 months, and what that means is we have to reengineer completely how BTC does business,” he added.

“We finally we got a lot of the right things in place, and we will launch our first franchise store in the next four-six weeks in Grand Bahama.

“The real focus over the next 12-14 months will be to get other Bahamian entrepreneurs. I suppose we will look to bring on as many as the market would dictate, but I suppose we should have at least 40 across all of the Family Islands.”