Wednesday, March 7, 2012

First phase of e-governance initiative 85 percent complete


Project Manager of the E-Governance Unit, Alexei Ramotar said the laying of fibre-optic cable to improve Guyana’s telecommunications sector and ensure connectivity in the country is should be complete by May/July.
Ramotar said that the Chinese company, Huawei Technology Company Limited was chosen in 2009 to provide infrastructural support for the project, which is now in the first phase of cable being laid from Lethem to Georgetown.
The plan proposed by Huawei has since gone through several reviews and changes as necessary. One of the major issues when the administration decided to establish electronic governance was that there was only one fibre-optic link out of Guyana in the form of the America 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 laying 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 over almost the entire designated route but it requires additional fine-tuning before the actual operations can begin.
“There are also gaps in the cable run that the contractors are finishing off, so basically this is the first phase of the project,” Ramotar related. 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.
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 began 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.
Huawei is providing the electronics and technology to establish the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) advance sites in locations with government agencies to provide wireless access. The negotiations have already begun.
According to Ramotar, a decision was taken to switch from Wimax to the LTE technology in December, and again in January, due to technological advances over the past year.
“For that project, we will be working in collaboration with the Guyana Power and Light which is running new power lines from Corriverton to Edingburg, and part of their project is a fibre component so we decided instead of running another fibre component we just would use their cable and then we would extend it from Edingburg to Parika.”

2 comments:

  1. This well enable a faster link into the telecommunication world which provide to faster.The govt is really working to bring Guyana put to the standard has rest of the world.

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  2. The govt is working effortlessly to bring Guyana up to scratch with the world of technology and this e-goverance will be better in the working world.

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