13,000 households due for landline phones this year
--- other hi-tech services being upgraded, extended
Guyana Chronicle
January 30, 2004
ADDITIONAL 13,000-plus households across the country's coastland can expect landline telephones from Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company (GT&T) for the first time this year, as the company intensifies its hi-tech expansion programme to meet the continual demands of an increasingly sophisticated citizenry.
That's the word from General Manager and Chief Executive Officer Ms. Sonita Jagan.
If achieved, the projection will have surpassed GT&T's previous goal of adding 10,000 households to its list of landline customers each year.
"We set ourselves a target of 10,000 new landline phones each year based on our available human resources," General Manager and Chief Executive Officer Sonita Jagan told reporters at a breakfast and news conference at Telephone House yesterday. "So in providing in excess of 13,000 new landlines in 2004 we'll be stretching ourselves. But we've committed to doing so in what is essentially a substantial expansion programme."
By the end of 2003, GT&T had hooked up close to 93,000 landline phones serving 125,000 householders in the eleven years it has been in operation. And the bulk of those 93,000 landline phones - 75,000 to 89,000 - are residential lines. When GT&T took over from the state-run Guyana Telecommunication Corporation on January 28, 1991, only about 10,000 lines were in the system in all of Guyana.
Ms. Jagan said this year's expansion programme, expected to cost GT&T another US$15 million - the sum it spends each year - will see landline services upgraded and provided in North and South Ruimveldt, Newburg, Werk-en-Rust, Stabroek, Roxanne Burnham Gardens, GUYHOC Gardens and Shirley Field-Ridley Square in Georgetown and areas elsewhere in Demerara and in West and East Berbice.
She said a large exchange and combination of switches would be installed in South Ruimveldt for those urban/suburban communities in the Georgetown area still to be fully served. These are likely to be completed in another three weeks.
Remote switches will also be placed at Soesdyke, Rose Hall (Corentyne), and Vreed-en-Hoop (West Bank Demerara); services will be upgraded in Amelia's Ward to cater for new areas and an expansion of the housing scheme there, and exchanges will be provided No. 52 Village, Corentyne, to serve Nos. 48 to 55 Villages.
As for landline telephone services in Essequibo, the GT&T boss said that while a fixed wireless service there is working well, plans are afoot for an expansion programme in that county.
"We've gone and are going around the country with our service. "We cannot do all the villages or areas in one year," she stressed. "But providing telephone services all around Guyana is our goal and we're looking forward to continuing next year what may not be possible for us to undertake this year."
Ms. Jagan said that in light of the enormity of GT&T programme to provide, upgrade and expand its services in Guyana, she is taken by surprise when government officials make statements about dissatisfaction with the company's services thus far.
Yesterday's breakfast and news conference coincided with GT&T's 13th anniversary celebrations.