TSTT Succumbs to VoIP, Same Technology Used by Call Centres

After fighting the "call centers" which were eating up pieces of TSTT's pie, the Cable & Wireless and government-owned monopoly has given into Voice over Interenet Protocol.

Common sense would dictate that the telecom decided to take the advice of many Internet pundits who warned that TSTT should try to partner with VoIP instead of fighting it. However, egos prevent TSTT from making any such admission. Instead TSTT gives as its reason for making the switch to VoIP that it wants to satisfy Trinidad and Tobago's growing tourist industry. Taking the people to be fools, TSTT of course did not offer any details about this super increase in tourist arrivals that only TSTT seems to have felt a need to accommodate in this way.

Voice over Internet Protocol is the same technology the infamous and possibly still illegal call centers have been using to empower themselves to offer customers $1 per minute calls to the US, Canada, UK, etc.In response, TSTT had mobilised the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago to shut down the call centres who were taking away some of TSTT's international customers. This did not work out very well.

So then TSTT launched a "talk for so" product to compete with the call centres. That didn't seem to do too well either. So the C&W/gov't monopoly then offered people $1 per minute calls from their homes seasonally.

However, it finally seems to have sunk through to someone's skull that the only way was to partner with VoIP and this is what is happening according to a BN Americas report:

State-owned Trinidad & Tobago telco TSTT will upgrade its fixed and mobile networks using an IP-based access network from California-based IP solutions company Calix, TSTT said in a statement.

The network upgrade is already underway, and will allow TSTT to increase its capacity and convert all voice services to VoIP, TSTT said without providing financial details.

According to the statement, TSTT needed the upgrade to handle increased demand from the country's growing tourist industry.

"[The upgrade] puts us in a position to offer services rivaling those found in major metropolitan areas throughout the Americas," TSTT tech VP Trevor Deane said.

In addition the network upgrade will enable the company to rollout IPTV services in the future.

BNAmericas.com