POND ISLAND:--- St. Maarten Internet Service Provider (ISP) TelEm Group has praised officials of Bureau Telecommunications and Post St. Maarten (BTP) for organizing an well-attended internet policy development seminar at the Sonesta Maho Beach Resort and Casino recently.
The event was hosted in collaboration with the Internet Society and was broadcast worldwide via a live internet stream courtesy of TelEm Group.
The sessions were especially organized to promote internet use and policy development.
Having assessed feedback and received high marks from company personnel who attended the seminar, TelEm Group this week congratulated the BTP on its initiative to jointly host the seminar and hoped that other telecommunication-based events will take place in the future.
"From reports received, the event was not only well attended by our staff, but a lot of information was given out and contacts made that will be invaluable to them when it comes to providing excellent service to the public and TelEm Group customers," said TelEm Group Chief Financial Officer, Mrs. Helma Etnel.
She said not only was the company's participation in the event duly noted, but presentations by Chief Technical officer (CTO) on the Open Caribbean Internet Exchange (OCIX) and by Chief Commercial Officer, Mr. Brian Mingo, on new trends in internet use.
Mr. Louisa gave a historical background on the start of the OCIX – the first of its kind in the Caribbean.
He told seminar participants how TelEm Group is redoubling its efforts to increase local membership of the internet exchange with the addition of at least one important member from the French side.
Mr. Louisa is hopeful that the addition of this latest member will entice search engine, Google, to set up a station on St. Maarten.
"Once a company as well known as Google establishes itself on our internet exchange others will quickly follow," said Mr. Louisa, in an appeal to local telecommunication companies to join those who are already part of the Internet Exchange.
Chief Commercial Officer, Mr. Brian Mingo, entertained participants with some interesting statistics about the internet and internet use globally and locally.
Mr. Mingo said with the continued demise of traditional telephony, the culture of sharing digital images and video is forcing companies such as TelEm Group to radically change their business models to embrace new technologies that customers and members of the public are demanding.
"Right now the increasing demand is for more and more bandwidth at cheaper prices and that is the challenge for us as operators," said Mr. Mingo.
The Chief Commercial Officer provided comparative charts to show where St. Maarten lies compared to other parts of the world both in what the customer pays for bandwidth and what the company can technically provide.
"As a small island are we keeping up with the rest of the world? I would say yes. Can we do better? I would say definitely - and that is our challenge every day," said Mr. Mingo.
Operator of the live streaming feed, TelEm Group Network Engineer, Mr. Percival Cocks, said the opportunity to network with experts in the internet field regionally and internationally was also of great use.
"We will be following-up with some of the people we met at the seminar to exchange knowledge and ideas," said Mr. Cocks.
Internet Society Manager, Regional Affairs Latin America and the Caribbean, Mr. Shernon Osepa, has meantime thanked the TelEm Group executives and the company generally for their support in hosting of this important seminar.
"Everything went smoothly and we will wait to see what type of feedback we receive from the live stream provided by TelEm Group," said Mr. Osepa.
Chief Operating Officer, Bureau of Telecommunication and Post, Mr. Giovanni King, was also very pleased with the level of discussion and presentations that took place during the seminar.
He said the Bureau Telecommunications and Post St. Maarten (BTPSXM) in cooperation is the Internet Society (ISOC) organized the seminar called iNET St. Maarten under the theme "Embracing, an Open, Available, and Secured Internet."
"The objective of this particular seminar was to create awareness as it relates to the developments and capabilities facilitated by the Internet globally and on St. Maarten particularly. ISOC invited world-class speakers to address subjects ranging from the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 to the impact on socio-economic development enabled by the use of the Internet. The whole event was webcast and as such made available for the global community to follow the proceedings in real time," said Mr. King.
He said BTPSXM is very happy to acknowledge the fact that the local community contributed immensely in making this even a success.
"For two full days we had a full conference room with participants who actively engaged and interacted with the speakers. In particular BTPSXM would like to make mention of the fact that the Telem Group also contributed to the success of this event as it facilitated Internet access, bandwidth for the webcast, by registering several of its employees to participate in the event, and by providing speakers.
"BTPSXM hopes that at the end of the day we have created the spark that will light the fire needed to move the island forward and ultimately achieving the objective of Embracing, an Open, Available, and Secured Internet.
If we have succeeded in creating value for those that participated in the event and if this new appreciation for the capabilities facilitated by the use of the Internet could be translated into value creation in the participants daily activities then this seminar has been a great success," said Mr. King.
Telem Press Release
