Dear Editor
In 1990, GTC, the state-owned telephone company, was being privatized. Given the statistics of 2012 census, GTT was born before more than 50% of the Guyanese population. At the time, there was one bidder for the state owned enterprise.

The only bid was the reason that GTT was born. Twenty-seven years and several hundreds of millions of US dollars in capital investment later, GTT continues to evolve and reinvent itself as it refocuses its operations around the customer.

I note that Stabroek News (October 23, 2018) carried an article “Digicel has slashed capital expenditure here by 80 [per cent]”. This is in stark contrast to GTT’s investment in Guyana as we continue to focus on expanding broadband reach and speed by deploying the country’s fastest fibre optic network – Blaze, 4G LTE on the Essequibo Coast. In fact, over 2017 and 2018, more than 12,000 homes and business that never had service are now able to access Blaze. We are changing lives. Our push continues through 2019 as we move our development drive to Bartica and Berbice.

Our investment in Guyana is a stark contrast to Digicel’s investment over the past 3 years. GTT has invested more than 160% more than Digicel in Guyana’s future. The contrast is much more glaring in the past fiscal year (2017) which shows GTT as investing almost 5 times or 500% more than Digicel in order to build the nation. Why would GTT invest more in Guyana while the competitor invests less?

As a company, we invest heavily in our staff as we transition to an era of “always on” where our customers expect everything to work all the time. That is a very fair expectation. This starts with leadership and we are about to embark on the fourth cohort of leadership development. In addition our ISO 9000 and continuous improvement goal of being compliant by 2020 will put us in good stead to deliver higher quality of service to our customers. We are a team of 700 strong and we are improving.

GTT plays a significant role in the lives of all Guyanese; we do not take our responsibility to the nation lightly. We are focused on improving the lives and we believe we are most impactful by doing two things (outside of our day job of ensuring that you are connected to your loved ones) – be a catalyst for STEM (acronym for science, engineering, technology and math) education and to create a pathway for families to be healthy and stay together through mitigating against the worst effects of cancer.

For STEM, we aim to raise G$40 million annually to help Guyana not only dream but to realize dreams. Because of this initiative, most recently, Runique Belle of Bartica now has a full scholarship to University of Guyana to pursue a degree in Chemistry. STEMGuyana has been enabled to provide training on robotics to more than 800 Guyanese youth through commitment of more than 8 million dollars and significant intangible support from GTT.

GTT Innov8, the main showcase of STEM development in Guyana, was an amazing event that saw more than 7000 people experience and learn about technology and applications of technology. The 2nd running of Innov8 in March 2019 will prove to be even more inspiring.
GTT’s vision for cancer is significant as we set out to create a healthy society. One of three people is likely to have some form of cancer at during their lifetime. One of five people who develop cancer is likely to die of the disease. We aim to beat the odds. Through strong partnerships, we are embarking on a mission to find partnerships to ensure that Guyana has strong awareness, screening and a viable oncology department by 2023. GTT Pinktober is the vehicle that is being used to attain this dream. The GTT Pinktober walk/run is certainly a show of solidarity as we estimate more than 8000 people (up from 5000 in 2017) came out a tour de force against this global epidemic.

It has been 27 years – a time before most Guyanese were born – since GTT replaced GTC as the telecommunications provider. We have come a long way from only 13,000 telephone lines and waiting hours if not days to book a long distance call. We are not perfect. I assure you though, we are solely focused on our vision of improving life experiences by unlocking innovation through applications and infrastructure to every home and business.

Regards
Justin Nedd
Chief Executive Officer of GTT