IN THE MEDIA
TELCELL TDMA SERVICES ENDED
POND ISLAND--February 13, 2009-- St.Maarten Telephone TelEm Group of Companies’ mobile phone division shut down its outdated TDMA services on Thursday, ending a decade of calling on the now-obsolete digital platform and leaving only one Dutch St. Maarten provider still using the framework. TelCell transferred most of its subscribers to the newer GSM platform in mid-January.
Four of the longest-serving TelCell employees who were there when the company started with digital service cut the power to a row of TDMA IS-136 base stations and stopped the system exchange via three terminals in the control room.
Four of the longest-serving TelCell employees who were there when the company started with digital service cut the power to a row of TDMA IS-136 base stations and stopped the system exchange via three terminals in the control room.
TDMA, which is a component of the GSM and newer calling platforms, is an obsolete technology and TelCell is looking to expand its range and offerings, said Network Operations Manager Earl Thomas on Thursday.
TelCell Managing Director and TelEm Group’s Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) Brian Mingo called it the end of the “golden years” of mobile calling in St. Maarten.
Thomas was among the first TelCell employees who brought the TDMA calling platform to St. Maarten in 1998. He said turning off the switch was not so much emotional as it was the end of an age with older technology. “I think they appreciated its reliability,” said Thomas of the technicians in the heavily-secured nerve centre of TelCell’s calling operations.
He said investing in the equipment, which weathered St. Maarten’s worst hurricanes in the 1990s, had been worthwhile. “Those were the golden years on St. Maarten,” said Mingo, explaining that the eight-million-guilder investment had returned more than 100 million guilders in the last 10 years. “The equipment has paid for itself.”
Mingo said TelEm, which has fixed line, mobile and Internet offerings, planned to focus on the newer 3G service in the next few years. Thomas said technicians would remove the row of metal cabinets and sell them on the market. “The equipment has never failed,” he said.
Eastern Caribbean Cellular (ECC) is the last of the Dutch side’s three mobile service providers to still use TDMA. ECC Managing Director Beulah Jonis said Thursday that the company was forced by ongoing litigation about taxes not to make any long-term investments.
Source: The Daily Herald VOL 18 NO. 228
