Bahamas News

Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) officials have announced that the company will begin shutting down the now-obsolete TDMA cell phone network next month, as the company completes a multimillion-dollar migration to the GSM system.

Vice President of Marketing at BTC Marlon Johnson said on Tuesday that the company had plans to spend $44 million to do an “overlay” to complement the current frequency of the GSM system.

“What this will do is it will put GSM on the same frequency that the TDMA is on now,” he said. “That will improve the capacity on the network, which means that a lot more people will be able to get on to the network and it will also improve the coverage especially where their coverage issues have expanded over long distances.”

Mr. Johnson said once the overlay is in place, the TDMA system will begin shutting down.

” We will start with the Family Islands and end up with New Providence and Grand Bahama,” he said. “I think what customers will experience once the overlay is in place and turned on is that they will get similar if not better coverage with their GSM phones as they were getting with their TDMA phones.”

Officials have recently said that people who now own a TDMA number will be able to use their same phone number when the transformation to GSM is complete.

Mr. Johnson said the first shut down of TDMA will be on August 15 in Exuma, Andros and the Berry Islands.

On August 31, Ragged Island, Long Island, Rum Cay, San Salvador and Eleuthera will then switch over to GSM.

New Providence, Grand Bahama, Abaco, Acklins, Crooked Island, Bimini, and Inagua will make the switch on October 31.

Mr. Johnson addressed some of the common complaints about the GSM network, including an inability to send or receive text messages, or access voice mail.

“It may very well be that there may be an antenna close to where you live or out in your area,” he said.

“I think that everyone can see that the GSM system is not where we want it to be, but it’s constant upgrades that we are trying to do,” Mr. Johnson added. “But I don’t think we have had any major issues as of late.”

Mr. Johnson said that the company is also working on launching the Internet and picture sending on GSM smart phones.

He said the company hopes to have this in place by the end of the summer.

“We are constantly working to make our services better,” he said.

Source: Bahama Journal