EDITOR, The Tribune.

I’m presently a director at a global internet service orovider. I started my career at BTC. I’ve been in telecommunications for more than 20 years. In the past, I’ve not commented on The telecommunications sector in The Bahamas, however, I think last week’s announcements and the comments deserves an editorial. Would you please permit this to be printed.

The most recent announcement by Liberty Latin America divesting itself of the cellular towers in their asset portfolio is quite a harbinger for things to come. Globally, telcos have been moving major portions of their assets and services to third parties in a lease or subscription-based model in a desire to reduce capital expenditure (CapEx ) and streamline the operational expenses (OpeEx) to more predictable “pay-as-you-go” models. As a matter of fact, the entire cloud infrastructure model is based on this concept of more predictable costs, where resources are only used when the demand is required. The challenge for us in The Bahamas is: “We are not driving the Bus”.

Having sold off the majority decision making for BTC, we will always only know about these deals once they are in the public sphere. We are also quite aware that; property in The Bahamas owned and managed by foreigners will most likely be available and continue to be owned by foreign entities going forward. The most we could hope for is in its approval, the government of The Bahamas, (TGOTB) create a condition where Phoenix Tower establishes a local or Bahamas based subsidiary/office with local staff to maintain these towers. Let’s be frank; BTC’s minority Bahamian boards only tools are; moral persuasion and recommend delay or deny work permits.

One of the logical next steps in this telecoms enterprise metamorphosis is the sale of other BTC properties like the traditional central offices. With the reduction of home phones coupled with the proliferation of fiber to the home/building (FTTH/B), the need for central offices have become drastically reduced. The good news here is that these central offices can now be repurposed as data centers. TGOTB would be well advised to get ahead of the next tranche of sale activities by LLA because, it’s coming. Data centres can truly democratise the telecommunications space in The Bahamas. Data centres along with allocating “Right of Way” (access to roads & utility poles) terms for new hopefully local fiber companies will give true choices to the Bahamian population.

Let’s be reminded that Liberty Latin America/Cable and Wireless have already transferred all of the initially Bahamian submarine cable assets into a separate company called “Liberty Networks”. Liberty Networks has sole responsibility for allocating fiber space on the existing inter Island infrastructure and connectivity to the mainland US. This submarine network has now become one of the two choke points for internet/data transmission between the Bahamas and the world.

Liberty Networks and Cable Bahamas are de-facto oligopolies in The Bahamas. Liberty Networks has the Bahamas II, ARCOS & BDNSI subsea cables and Cable Bahamas owns the BICS subsea cable through its Caribbean Crossings subsidiary.

These two entities acting like true oligopolies, keep Internet prices exorbitantly high (local direct symmetrical access is .10 USD per Mbs. In the US compared to 10.00 USD per Mbs in the Bahamas).

In a truly competitive environment, more subsea cables from The Bahamas to the mainland will reduce the cost per Mb. Several strategies can be deployed to achieve this which include encouraging existing subsea operators that pass through the Bahamas or establish new subsea partners.

TGOTB is also actively promoting the Fintech industry at an unprecedented pace, perhaps as a global hub in the west. Fintechs by their nature trade/make huge financial transactions at a time and can be data intensive and time sensitive. These trade executions can lose huge sums of monies when trades are delayed. Execution is critical & transaction speeds need to be less than 20 milliseconds. Today, neither Bahamas based entities can guarantee these sub 20 milliseconds latency speeds. Lots more upgrades are required on existing platforms in order to be compliant. Further, existing Fintechs in other competitive regions like Cyprus and Singapore use optical wavelength technology that supports these speeds. For The Bahamas to be competitive in this space, optical wavelengths must be deployed (this requirement is a must).

I’d like to revisit the data centre concept; Data centers are becoming quite popular in the region quite frankly, BTC presently use LLA data centers in Curacao and other parts of the Caribbean region to house several of their OSS/ BSS applications in its use. Data centres in a deregulated telecoms environment can attract the big 4 cloud infrastructure providers like Amazon’s Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Microsoft’s Azure and Oracle Cloud. These providers need unfettered fiber access to the mainland and local business and residents to truly enable democratisation of telecoms in The Bahamas. Only then will telecomms be competitive and internet services be at a higher standard and affordable cost. Otherwise, these two entities (BTC and CBL) will continue to become a bottleneck for optimum growth.

In reality, the true genius of the LLA/Cable and Wireless purchase is the subsea cable network. A quick review of both the Liberty Networks and the TeleGeography Submarine cable website will reveal how liberty has amassed the subsea cable ownership through a series of purchases of regional and small operators from unsuspecting governments including TGOTB. If I remember correctly, someone floated the idea of separating the sub-sea network.from the local network during the privatization exercise. That idea was evidently not perused (This was pre-BDNSi). However, Liberty’s subsea network is running at less than 10 percent of the technology capacity this is despite their upgrading the platforms from Huawei to Infinera. Oligopolies uh!

While the devil is in the details, most of BTC’s towers are on government-owned property, outside of the central offices. Towers are on BPL, WSC, UB, MoE, OPM, RBDF, RBPF Baha Mar and various church properties throughout the Bahamian archipelago. The sale relates mostly to the towers themselves. At approval, it becomes incumbent upon URCA to hold Phoenix Tower accountable for the proper use and maintenance of the Towers.

In the wireless space, fiber is a critical component of the 5G infrastructure. 5G is a lot more fiber intensive than previous wireless generations primarily for efficiency & latency requirements. Therefore, fiber build out is critical. However, we need to appreciate that both wireless providers have pushed back on 5G delivery dates. In reality both BTC and Aliv have been selling 5G capable phones since 2021. Both Samsung and Apple have 5G capable phones in all major and new frequencies since 2021. 5G wireless networks also bring a new feature called “Private Networks” through a process called Network Slicing” TGOTB itself as well as the new Port development in Grand Bahama can truly benefit from Private Networks. The bottom line, TGOTB can and should benefit from these moves by their multinational partners, however, being more proactive will drive much more benefits for the Bahamian people.

CONCERNED TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROFESSIONAL

November 16, 2023