By Nerissa Golden
Mr. Denzil West, Director of the Department for Information Technology and eGovernment Services
Director of the Department for Information Technology and eGovernment Services (DITES), Denzil West has challenged entrepreneurs as well as young people on Montserrat to take advantage of the widening technological offerings on island to create ICT-driven businesses. He is also hoping that LIME and the newest player on the market, Digicel, would fully embrace the plans to reintroduce the sub-c fibre to Montserrat.
This challenge was made at the launch of Digicel 4G services on Monday, December 30, 2014. This launch now gives residents two options for mobile services and in the near future digital television and internet according to officials. He did this with the view that this development would benefit both companies as well as the people of Montserrat.
West said “I would like to encourage young entrepreneurs to pay attention to what is happening in the Info Communications sector and seize the new opportunities which are presenting themselves in this new era of liberalization and wider service offerings.”
“Do not get locked into simply being consumers of other people’s content; let us strive to create and market innovative ICT products to the world market.”
The director, who is also a member of the National ICT Council, also expressed his fervent hope that, “the Telecoms providers in Montserrat both fully embrace the Government’s plans to facilitate the reintroduction of subsea fibre to Montserrat; thereby improving their networks and providing additional resiliency and redundancy to our international communications gateway.”
“I am therefore serving public notice, that going forward microwave backhaul to Antigua will not be seen as sufficient to fulfil Montserrat’s goals in the info communications sector,” he cautioned.
“Both telco’s are now larger and more diversified than when they started the year, and we look forward also to keen competition in the Broadband Internet and High Definition Cable TV markets. We would like to suggest that the Telcos think of Montserrat when rolling out new cutting edge technology; and work with us in our quest to make Montserrat Digital by default,” West declared.
The monopoly telecommunications agreement between Government of Montserrat and Cable & Wireless ended in May 2007 while the monopoly Cable TV agreement between the government and Caribbean Cable Communications ended in January 2008. In 2010 the Information Telecommunications Act was enacted with the requisite regulations following in 2011.
