GT&T's acting Chief Financial Officer Sonita Jagan briefs the media on the company's 2013 plans as acting CEO Joe Singh and Marketing Manager Fay Wharton look on.

The Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) has announced that it will be offering blanket Wi-Fi coverage at the University of Guyana at a subsidised cost.

This was revealed by acting Chief Financial Officer Sonita Jagan at the company’s annual media brunch on Thursday.

“We’re hoping that this service will come in with the opening of the new university term on the 28 January. We’ve been working on it for the last few months and we’re actually hoping to roll out a high speed data Wi-Fi system over the entire UG campus (Turkeyen). It will probably extend to the borders of UG as well so we’re hoping that Cyril Potter (College of Education) will also be covered,” Jagan said.

“We will subsidise it to the extent that we’ll charge probably around $100 an hour so it will be very affordable for students with the ability to have access to good download speeds and upload speeds wherever they are on campus.”    

Jagan added that the service will be extended next to the Guyana National Stadium and then to the university’s Tain campus in Berbice. The company already sponsors the university’s IT laboratory.

“We’re going to look to see what other sites, a possibility may be the Stabroek Market area we’re not sure; it comes down to looking at where you can securely put the nodes that are necessary to put something like that in place … and also getting reliable power supply.”   

According to Jagan, they are looking to have all three sites up within the first quarter of the year and she added that an engineer working with the company providing the equipment is already on the ground doing surveys.

Meanwhile, the official also announced that GT&T was ready to roll out DSL internet service for subscribers from Mahaica, East Coast Demerara to Skeldon, East Berbice.

“What we did in the last few months is made the entire corridor from Mahaica going all the way to Skeldon … now ready for the data Emagine service so we will now be going on a blitz to offer all the households the new DSL high speed service.”

Jagan noted that Moleson Creek will not be included in this phase.