A MERE few months after its launch, consumers have already begun to complain of the poor 4G service being offered by local telecommunications providers.With the launch of the 4G service, consumers were told that it would enable much faster connection to the Internet than ever before, whether to browse, watch videos or movies, download music, or shop online. This has not happened yet, and consumers are calling on the two major telephone companies to live up to their promises.

Subject Minister Cathy Hughes said on Friday that the upgrade is going through a period of transition. The hiccups, she said, are expected to cease before year-end, as both the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT) and Digicel are working to get the service in order.

Minister Hughes told reporters that she also is a customer and has been having regular discussions with the two telephone companies on the issue.
“I’d like to say that I, too, am a customer, so I, too, like everybody else, understand having to have to deal with the challenges of dropped calls and systems going down quite often.

“But in fairness to them (GTT and Digicel) they are aware; I have reminded them of that. And in fairness to the telephone companies, we really gave them a short space of time to put out 4G.

“I had a situation where we were having thousands of people coming to Guyana in the month of May, and I asked them, as we would say in Guyanese parlance, ‘to see what they could do’. So now they really have to build out that network. It means importing specific pieces of equipment, it means re-training. I am confident that with my constant interface with them, that this is a period of transition,” the minister said.