Jamaica's Paving the Road to the Information Highway

Photo Credit: LuckyLuque

So in local news, on April 6th, 2011, Lime (Cable and Wireless) and Flow (Columbus Communications) signed an agreement with the government of Jamaica to build a broadband island-wide network which will provide internet access to schools, libraries, post offices and other locations across Jamaica. The toll to get onto this highway? $543 million!


At the signing which was held at Jamaica House, Minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister, Daryl Vaz, who has responsibility for telecommunications stated that "On Monday March 21, 2011, Cabinet approved the award of contracts to Cable and Wireless and Columbus Communications for the provision of a managed island-wide broadband network, not only for providing connectivity and Internet access to our targeted schools, libraries, and post offices. Any community, however remote, which has a public secondary or high school, will be provided with facilities for Internet access. The spin off benefit of this Project is that the deployment of high speed Internet services in the associated communities and within communities traversed by the optical fibre cables can be accelerated."

Garry Sinclair, managing director of Jamaica and Cayman, LIME; and Michele English, president and chief operating officer of FLOW, affix their signatures to the contract to provide a highspeed broadband network across the island. They are being watched keenly by Minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister Daryl Vaz (right) and Dr Andre Foote, chairman of the Universal Access Fund Company Limited. (Photo: Aston Spaulding)

The 5 year project will to provide internet access with 99.9 per cent availability, less than 8.77 hours of downtime per year and high speed transmission of 100 megabits per second to 283 institutions initially and is set to roll out over the next 18 months. This venture is expected to enable services such as video conferencing along with better use of teaching resources through establishing virtual learning environments.