A US$792, 000 project undertaken by Cable & Wireless, will ensure redundancy in critical areas of intra and inter island telecommunications services in St. Kitts & Nevis. The installation of two radio links – one in Frigate Bay and the other at Ramsbury in Nevis over the last several weeks, will provide both redundancy and resilience to Cable & Wireless’ Network.
The main link which was installed at Ponds Needsmust, would complement the existing link between Bayfords and Ramsbury. This means that customers on Nevis will be assured of continued service in the aftermath of any major disaster or other disruption to the network.
“We are extremely happy that we were able to complete this exercise at this time. Of course the timing could not have been better as it coincides with the hurricane season which as we have seen this year, has been an extremely active one. We recognize that reliable telecommunications is a critical function, particularly in times of natural disasters, which is why we have made every effort to strengthen the inter-island communication capability,” remarked Chairman and Acting Chief Executive, Dr Osbert Liburd.
Meanwhile, as part of the project, a similar exercise was also carried out on the Frigate Bay Exchange which would now result in added resiliency for customers on that exchange. In other words, the installation of this new link now means that should there be a network failure on the existing fibre cable, the new radio link would automatically ‘kick in’ to mitigate loss of service without affecting customers on this exchange.
Explaining the rationale behind the implementation of the project at Frigate Bay, Vice President of Networks, Clifton Riley said, “we are very much aware that the Frigate Bay area is the nucleus of tourism activity in St. Kitts, hence the primary intention of the exercise was to ensure that as far as is technically possible, telecommunications service to this exchange would be always on.”
For more information, kindly contact, Laverne Caines, Corporate Communications Manager at Tel: 465 0985; Fax: 465 3767; or email: laverne.caines@cw.com.
