Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) taps DigitalRoute for 4G mediation

DigitalRoute has announced that it will support BTC’s ongoing 4G and NGN projects, strengthening its presence in the region and also complementing the independent vendor’s growth in North America.

A 4G network in the Bahamas may seem like ‘not quite news’ compared to the huge rollouts that are happening in the US, but small implementations such as this provide excellent benefits for residents and visitors and, importantly, a real-life test bed for other markets. With its 388,000 mobile customers, the rollout meant that the Bahamas "leapt light years ahead with a single call," BTC’s CEO Geoff Houston said after the launch in November.

The ‘Family Islands’ in the Caribbean together represent a huge holiday – thus roaming – market and new majority stakeholder Cable & Wireless sees the BTC roll-out as a first step to bringing the islands into one telecoms entity. Thus BTC was looking for a high performance and flexible solution and according to BTC’s CIO Sheldon Mundle the company is “very impressed by the rich set of off-the shelf functionality that MediationZone can provide.”

The belief is that 4G in an island community with dated telecommunications infrastructure will catapult the community into the age of music downloads, YouTube, banking transactions, ticket purchasing for shows, BBC News or live games, while allowing visitors the functionality and freedom they enjoy at home. In the wider context the data that will need to be managed from 4G network is huge and mediation reduces the number of point integrations required, providing the functionality to manage usage data before it reaches the business support systems, thus streamlining the process.

Reports are already coming in from another island, not only of encouraging take up of 4G service but also of a seismic shift in how customers are using their devices in their daily lives. Watch this space.