Guyana’s E-governance project 90 percent complete

By Danielle Campbell-Lowe –

Administrator of the E-governance Unit, Alexei Ramotar said the installation of the towers and other hardware infrastructure has pushed the project to 90 percent completion.
Ramotar told Guyana Times International on Monday that the selection of the tower sites is based on population density and proximity to government services in order to minimise costs.

“That phase has just started and we’re just about 10 percent completed. The sites are chosen… to avoid having to be charged to rent space on people’s land and so on.” The laying of the fibre optic cable is intended to improve Guyana’s telecommunications and ensure wider Internet connectivity. One of the major issues when the administration decided to establish electronic governance; was that there was only one fibre link out of Guyana in the form of the Americas 2 cables. About two years ago, a second cable was brought in through Suriname by the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT& T).
Ramotar stated that this was not sufficient and government decided on a third fibre optic cable to provide better telecommunication to augment its business functions.
“In many countries around the world, e-governance is important to getting the job done. Documents are signed by electronic signature; you don’t have to wait years to develop anything such as travelling from far-flung areas to access passport services,” Ramotar explained. He pointed out that the cable has been laid covering almost the entire designated route, but it requires additional fine-tuning before the actual operations can begin.
During the laying of the cable, gaps were discovered and contractors were working on closing those gaps.
The government is building the communications network from Georgetown to Lethem and Brazilian telecommunication company, OI, is responsible for providing Guyana with data access to the world from Boa Vista to Bom Fin.
Integration
This will be integrated with another fibre cable running from Moleson Creek to Parika. The cables will interconnect to provide services, such as Internet access and video conferencing, to government agencies in the various locations. The project coordinators have also held talks with the security organisations, including the Guyana Police Force to discuss the provision of bandwidth once the system is operational.
“As the system is right now, each government agency is responsible for its own telecommunications, so in this way we will significantly lower the overall cost of telecommunications through one high-capacity cable,” Ramotar stated.
The Chinese company, Huawei Technology Company Limited, was chosen in 2009 to provide infrastructural support for the project, which is in the final phase of laying the cable from Lethem to Georgetown.
Since then, the plan proposed by Huawei has gone through several stages of reviews and changes. Huawei is providing the electronics and technology to establish the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) advance sites in locations with government agencies.
This is to provide wireless access and negotiations have already been conducted.
According to Ramotar, a decision was taken to switch from Wimax to the LTE technology in December 2011, and again in January 2012, due to technological advances over a 12-month period.
For that project, the e-governance team worked in collaboration with the Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) which is running new power lines from Corriverton to Edingburg. Part of their project is a fibre component so government decided to utilise the GPL cable before extending from Edingburg to Parika, instead of running a separate fibre component.
Ramotar related that it would be expensive to run cables across the Essequibo River, so the microwave system will be utilised in areas such as Anna Regina, to support the requirements in the region until such time as funds are available to run the cables. In the interior locations, especially Rupunnuni, Ramotar noted that the fibre cable from Lethem to Georgetown is equipped with drop-off points in areas such as Linden, Annai, Kurupakari, Lethem and Mabura.