Govt’s fibre optic cable lands from Brazil

Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon announced on Wednesday, December 08th, that government’s fibre optic cable has landed from Brazil, and it is now up to Guyanese authorities to lay the cable from Lethem to the city. 

He told the media that the $1 million contract to lay the cable has already been signed. “What is now almost exclusively the Guyanese responsibility is to lay the cable from its point of entry into Guyana, just off the bridge in Lethem, (all the way) towards Linden, then back towards Providence.” 

The next step is to ensure that the necessary capacity-building and technology support systems are in place. Dr Luncheon believes that these will allow government to realise the information and communication technology transformation it is seeking for Guyana. 

President Bharrat Jagdeo on Monday announced that a $35 million contract was already signed with Huawei Technologies Co., based in Shenzhen, China, to provide a WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) Internet system. He said the system would be used for e-governance, schools, hospitals and police stations. 

According to Dr Luncheon, while citizens will be able to get better and cheaper bandwidth from the laying of the cable then, widespread benefits will not be felt until about two or three years later. He stated that real benefits will be determined by what is created after the use of the improved bandwidth. “I’m pretty certain that the benefits would evolve from (their) earlier stages to a more mature stage, as we get the benefits of what might be the most primary offer, and then as we move into value added (processing),” Luncheon noted. “It’s with our constant use and intellectual development capacity that comes… being versed and being innovative.” 

The project is part of a larger government plan to improve Internet access in Guyana. The Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company Limited (GT&T) recently launched a high-speed Internet service after a $60 million fibre-optic cable network that runs from Suriname to Guyana was set up in January. 

President Jagdeo had, last January, announced that a fibre optic cable from neighbouring Brazil would be landed in Guyana, and he had anticipated its arrival in Georgetown by the second quarter of this year. He had said the undertaking, together with other government information communications technology (ICT) programmes, would facilitate the connectivity of areas along the route, enabling those areas to utilise secure, stable and high output communication technology.The Brazil/Guyana fibre optic cable, with its high bandwidth, will be dedicated to e-Governance; and with access to it citizens, can electronically find public information, download government forms, contact their representatives, and access services relating to pensions, passports and birth certificates, among other things. The Brazilian side of the cable was installed by Globenet, a subsidiary of Oi, Brazil’s largest telecoms operator and the biggest wire line telephone company in South America (in terms of total service lines). 

 The landing station for the cable from Brazil is at Lethem, and the connection from there to Linden will be done by local civil engineering firms MMC, Dax Contracting and Dynamic Engineering, which will bury cables along the route and use Guyana Power & Light (GPL) poles to hang cables, where available.