{"id":26452,"date":"2012-10-02T09:38:22","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T13:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/?p=26452"},"modified":"2012-10-02T09:38:22","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T13:38:22","slug":"btc-reports-800-percent-increase-in-data-usage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2012\/10\/btc-reports-800-percent-increase-in-data-usage","title":{"rendered":"BTC Reports 800 Percent Increase in Data Usage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Data usage amongst Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) customers has skyrocketed due to the company’s $42.8 million mobile network upgrade.<\/p>\n

“When we launched 4G (the fastest download speeds available worldwide) mobile voice traffic increased by 60 percent. Mobile data was up by 800 per cent,” BTC CEO Geoff Houston said.<\/p>\n

“Before we upgraded, three percent of our sales were smart phones. Today, nearly half of all our phone sales are smart phones.”<\/p>\n

The company issued a news release noting that the 18-month network upgrade has put the country’s telecom environment ahead of many parts of the world and has also seen the sale of smart phones soar.<\/p>\n

“What we saw when we upgraded our mobile offerings was an almost insatiable appetite among Bahamians for the latest devices, the fastest downloads, the newest, the best,” Houston said.<\/p>\n

Houston was speaking at the 9th Annual Abaco Business Outlook.<\/p>\n

The network upgrade has been a focus of BTC since it was privatized in April 2011.<\/p>\n

Houston said with BTC a part of a $3 billion conglomerate, as opposed to a $350 million standalone company, BTC has benefitted from increased buying power that has enabled the company to slash its prices.<\/p>\n

Mobile data plans have been reduced by some 25 percent, he said.<\/p>\n

“We reduced post paid charges. We reduced the cost of pre-paid minutes. We eliminated inter-island toll charges for calls originating from mobile phones,” Houston said.<\/p>\n

The company CEO said next on BTC’s agenda is to have 4G launched throughout the islands hopefully at the end of 2012.<\/p>\n

“Andros and Cat Island are complete; Long Island should be done by mid-October. Most of New Providence and Grand Bahama are complete with a few areas still being worked on,” Houston said.<\/p>\n

BTC’s senior manager for public relations, Jerome Sawyer said BTC aims to finish the build-out with enhanced 2G for voice and 4G for data by year-end.<\/p>\n

“We replaced the antiquated legacy 2G platform for voice with a new 2G platform for a better voice experience.<\/p>\n

“Here in Abaco, where we have installed new cell sites, you only have to think back two years ago to what it was like.<\/p>\n

“If you had turned around in your own house, you would have lost a call or if it rained or if you were out of range of a cell site,” he said.<\/p>\n

With 183 cell sites throughout the country, Sawyer noted that Abaco boasts 42 cell sites – second only to New Providence that has 46.<\/p>\n

By Cleopatra Murphy<\/span><\/em>
\nFreeport News Reporter<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Data usage amongst Bahamas Telecommunications Company customers has skyrocketed due to the company’s $42.8 million mobile network upgrade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-26452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-btc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}