Guyana's government has granted mobile company Digicel a temporary license to originate and terminate long distance traffic on its network after the America II undersea fiber optic cable suffered damage on May 6, Digicel said in a statement.
The damage to the America II cut off the country's only fiber connection with the rest of the world.
Since then, the country's incumbent fixed line provider Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T), which has the only international license, has been using a limited satellite network to route all internet and long distance traffic.
According to a Digicel spokesperson, by allowing the mobile company to directly interconnect its traffic the "impact of this disruption to the Guyana economy and citizens would be minimized."
Moreover, the company believes that the cable fault illustrates the value of having a competitive market that is not dependent on one operator to handle all international traffic.
"The damage to the Americas II cable systems shows the vulnerability of telecommunication services that predominantly rely on one international gateway without sufficient redundancy in the event of a disruption to that gateway," the spokesperson told BNamericas in an email response.
Digicel's temporary license is valid until the Americas II cable is brought back online, but the spokesperson would not estimate how long that might take. Local reports have put the period at as long as 21 days."
Posted to the site on 14th May 2007
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/23735.php