Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) is set to spend a total of $18 million to add new cell towers, expanding capacity and building out the first phase of its Fourth Generation Long Term Evolution (4G LTE) mobile network on four islands.
Six new cell towers will be built on New Providence over the next six weeks in order to meet the need for additional mobile network capacity and coverage to support the BTC customer base increase.
Three have already been installed on the Sir Milo Butler Highway, at Pinewood Gardens North, and Carmichael Road delivering improved cell phone service across the board on the southwest side of New Providence. Many more are planned both on New Providence and in the Family Islands
"Significant additional mobile network capacity is needed to address the consistent demand," said Marlon Johnson, BTC's senior vice president of brands and communication.
"More cell towers in targeted locations help us meet the demand and the recent addition of specific network software is boosting data capabilities. These activities also support the faster 4G LTE mobile network, currently in pre-launch test phase."
New Providence has the largest population of all the islands and is the seat of government. Grand Bahama, Eleuthera and Abaco are also thriving population centers of note. As BTC renders them technology-ready all those islands with expanding commerce and population centers will follow in a planned 4G LTE roll-out.
"The LTE soft launch began on January 23rd. Terminal A at the Lynden Pindling International Airport, Pinewood and Sammy's Chicken's 2G/4G sites are expected to be on air by mid-February. Hamilton, Current Island, Pompey Bay and Half Moon Cay will be completed by February 21st and the remaining sites by March 14th. We are also launching in the four major islands, Grand Bahama, Abaco, Eleuthera and Exuma this month, with a focus on educating our customers on the benefits of LTE technology," said Johnson.
"Over the last nine weeks there have been a number of network improvements in support of current activity and in preparation for LTE. We've added significant additional capacity to address the consistently increasing demand for data and voice services generally. Our key performance indicators tell us that on New Providence our worst affected areas have shown significant improvement since mid-December, in spite of the heavy Christmas traffic. BTC customers are feeling the difference as dropped calls have reduced significantly, primarily in those areas impacted and reported by customers across The Bahamas, not just here on New Providence," said the senior vice president.
4G LTE compatible mobile phones and devices are already available in all BTC flagship and franchise stores. 4G LTE is a standard for wireless communication developed to increase the capacity and speed of wireless data networks. It typically delivers around 20 megabits per second download speed.
In an interview with Guardian Business on Monday, the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority's (URCA) Director of Policy and Regulation Stephen Bereaux said that the quantity, location, appearance and sharing of cell towers by mobile operators in a competitive mobile environment is one of the areas that it hopes to see addressed in regulations that will govern the sector post-liberalization.

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