“FAMILY ISLANDS TDMA NETWORK OFF”

New Providence, The Bahamas, November 10, 2008 – “Our GSM expansion project in the Family Islands is now completed, and we are confident that residents and visitors alike will be able to attest to the superior quality of service.” These were the sentiments expressed by BTC VP of Marketing, Sales & Business Development, Marlon Johnson on the final termination of the TDMA network in the Family Islands. 

Just nine months ago, BTC launched the aggressive “Switch it Up” campaign geared towards migrating its TDMA customers to the GSM platform. Today, the company reports that TDMA services in all the Family Islands have been terminated; and all cellular customers are now using the internationally approved standard for wireless communications, GSM.

“This is certainly a red letter day for BTC, as we have successfully managed to migrate all of our Family Island customers to the GSM network,” Johnson said. 

The company has spent more than forty million dollars in GSM upgrades this year alone. BTC expanded its cell towers to accommodate data services, and it has also added numerous sites throughout the Family Islands. It is expected that customers will have the same coverage with their GSM phones throughout The Bahamas as they did with TDMA.

“There will still be some optimization work that needs to be done in all the islands to bring the service into full and complete operation.  We are also still constructing additional sites throughout the country to expand coverage and capacity on the GSM system”, continued Johnson.  “This work will take us through the end of the year and when we get to that point, we are confident that customers will be duly impressed with their quality of service”. 

New Providence will be the last island to be shut down on November 16th, representing the completion of the nationwide TDMA shut down.   

BTC has developed its wireless networks from TDMA to GSM or the Second Generation Network (2G).  The company has now moved to the Next Generation Network (2.5G) and are actively working on a 3G Network. 

The GSM platform offers twice the amount of capacity. This expansion project undertaken by BTC allows the company to provide advanced data services including GPRS, EDGE, Multi-Media Messaging (MMS), Office Tools, Bluetooth and a myriad of others and other value added services to support the growing customer needs.  

GSM also provides customers with more options on advanced handsets, mobile phones and devices at reasonable prices. This network provides prepaid and postpaid customers with the ability to roam with voice and data in more than 145 countries across the globe.