The Over-the-Top (OTT) con­tent providers such as Al­pha­bet, Meta, Ap­ple, Ama­zon, Tik­Tok, and Net­flix con­tin­ue to reap the fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works in the re­gion.  

This was re­vealed by Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tions (Can­to) sec­re­tary gen­er­al, Tere­sa Wankin, in an in­ter­view on Tues­day with Busi­ness Guardian, fol­low­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s re­cent­ly con­clud­ed con­fer­ence in Cu­ra­cao.  

She said the OTTs con­tin­ue to be a prob­lem for the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pa­nies and last year Can­to’s chair Lisa Agard an­nounced at its con­fer­ence that the big techs earned a com­bined to­tal of US$11.5 bil­lion in the Caribbean, and they are re­spon­si­ble for 67 per cent of the re­gion’s In­ter­net traf­fic.

Wankin said this was again high­light­ed at the Can­to con­fer­ence held last month.

“Can­to con­tin­ues to cham­pi­on the im­bal­ance in the rev­enue dis­tri­b­u­tion be­tween tele­com op­er­a­tors and these dig­i­tal gi­ants. We call them dig­i­tal gi­ants be­cause no one coun­try can fight Net­flix, or Face­book, or Google. They make a sub­stan­tial amount of mon­ey from the re­gion, and they don’t pay the gov­ern­ments, they don’t pay tax­es like tel­co com­pa­nies do.  And we still have to in­vest in the net­works, while our calls, rev­enue from tra­di­tion­al voice calls are al­most non-ex­is­tent,” she stressed.

Asked if Can­to had reached out to these OTTs for di­a­logue, Wankin in­di­cat­ed that the or­gan­i­sa­tion did a se­ries of road­shows in the Unit­ed States per­tain­ing to this is­sue, and in De­cem­ber spoke to some state of­fi­cials.

“We talk about it at dif­fer­ent fo­rums, and that’s the idea, to get them to come to the ta­ble and talk about a so­lu­tion. It hasn’t reached any­where, but these things take time be­cause you have to re­mem­ber, we’re small is­land de­vel­op­ing states.”

On the top­ic of in­vest­ment chal­lenges, the sec­re­tary gen­er­al said this year’s theme was “To­wards a Sus­tain­able Gi­ga­bit So­ci­ety” and if the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion or­gan­i­sa­tions are to achieve that, there are a cou­ple of things that need to be done, such as ex­pand­ing and main­tain­ing tele­coms net­works, es­pe­cial­ly in these small is­land economies, which is a very cap­i­tal in­cen­tive, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to achieve wide­spread con­nec­tiv­i­ty with­out sub­stan­tial fund­ing.

“Reg­u­la­to­ry un­cer­tain­ty is al­so there. Each Caribbean Is­land has dif­fer­ent leg­is­la­tion and dif­fer­ent reg­u­la­to­ry, what I should say, pa­ra­me­ters that tel­cos have to live by.

Cli­mate risk, such as hur­ri­canes, earth­quakes, ris­ing sea lev­els, some­times we don’t talk about it, de­pend­ing on which fo­rum you are.”

“Some peo­ple think cli­mate change is still a myth in 2025. So, all those are things that bring about more chal­lenges. And we have to deal with these chal­lenges sus­tain­ably, in a sys­tem­at­ic way. So how are tele­coms re­spond­ing to that? Re­silience through in­no­va­tion,” Wankin ex­plained.

On the rev­enue front, the Can­to sec­re­tary gen­er­al said from 2017 and 2023 fixed voice rev­enue de­clined by 50.5 per cent and do­mes­tic mo­bile voice rev­enues de­clined 23.8 per cent. How­ev­er, fixed in­ter­net rev­enues in­creased by 24 per cent.

At the con­fer­ence last month, the chair Lisa Agard said US$9 bil­lion plus is need­ed to sup­port the Caribbean’s tran­si­tion to a gi­ga­bit so­ci­ety, so the ques­tion was asked how is this go­ing to be ad­dressed. Wankin said sev­er­al ways were dis­cussed, such as pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships where gov­ern­ments and tele­com op­er­a­tors could col­lab­o­rate to share in­fra­struc­ture costs.

“Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pa­nies from each re­gion­al coun­try pay uni­ver­sal ser­vice funds and these are funds that are man­aged by the reg­u­la­tors so our equiv­a­lent will be taxed in Trinidad. Each coun­try would have a tax by of course a dif­fer­ent name, and they would man­age those funds and some­times tel­cos part­ner with gov­ern­ments to do projects that pro­vide ac­cess, most­ly in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties,” she men­tioned.

With the ad­vent of What­sApp, roam­ing on mo­bile de­vices has seen a de­cline. Wankin not­ed that roam­ing was the first to feel the pinch, rev­enue-wise, but telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pa­nies still have roam­ing agree­ments, which they must ho­n­our.

The sec­re­tary-gen­er­al out­lined that CAN­TO plays a cru­cial role in dri­ving eco­nom­ic growth by ad­vo­cat­ing for poli­cies that en­able dig­i­tal ex­pan­sion and in­no­va­tion across the re­gion.

What that means, she said, is that the or­gan­i­sa­tion us­es all its ini­tia­tives and all its projects are fo­cused on en­hanc­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty, fos­ter­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ship and strength­en­ing work­force de­vel­op­ments.

“We al­so en­gage in strate­gic part­ner­ships with re­gion­al and glob­al tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion pol­i­cy­mak­ers to cre­ate a sup­port­ive ecosys­tem for in­vest­ment and in­no­va­tion. We al­so fos­ter cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty re­silience, dig­i­tal in­clu­sion ,and sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic poli­cies,” she dis­closed.

Al­so speak­ing at the Can­to con­fer­ence last month, CEO of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) Kent West­ern told the stake­hold­ers that cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is a grow­ing con­cern in the re­gion, as the Caribbean is a prime tar­get for cy­ber­crime, with fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ment sec­tors par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble.  

“Bermu­da has es­tab­lished one of the most se­cure fin­tech en­vi­ron­ments glob­al­ly, thanks to rig­or­ous reg­u­la­to­ry pro­ce­dures. Es­to­nia’s cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty-first e-gov­ern­ment mod­el serves as a ref­er­ence for our dig­i­tal frame­works.”

At TSTT, West­ern said se­cu­ri­ty is not op­tion­al, it is a busi­ness ne­ces­si­ty.  

“We are im­ple­ment­ing ze­ro-trust ar­chi­tec­tures and AI-dri­ven threat de­tec­tion. We are al­so strength­en­ing com­pli­ance with glob­al se­cu­ri­ty stan­dards to pro­tect cus­tomers’ da­ta. We now have a vir­tu­al chief in­for­ma­tion se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer re­port­ing di­rect­ly to me, un­der­scor­ing our com­mit­ment to ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment and ca­pa­ble re­sources,” he em­pha­sised.

TSTT was a vic­tim of cy­ber­at­tack on Oc­to­ber 9, 2023, but was on­ly dis­closed on Oc­to­ber 27, 2023. This af­ter Fal­con Feeds, an In­dia-based tech­nol­o­gy se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, re­vealed on X that TSTT was in­clud­ed on the vic­tim list of the ran­somware group, Ran­somExx.

The cy­ber­breach went as far as af­fect­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s pri­vate de­tails. Wankin al­so men­tioned that cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty was wide­ly dis­cussed amongst the 32 coun­tries that par­tic­i­pat­ed in the con­fer­ence.

West­ern in­di­cat­ed that prof­itabil­i­ty is evolv­ing as well.  He said tele­com play­ers that in­vest in AI, au­toma­tion, and dig­i­tal ser­vices are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing stronger fi­nan­cial per­for­mance. Con­verse­ly, those who re­sist trans­for­ma­tion face de­clin­ing mar­gins and in­creased cus­tomer at­tri­tion.  

“At TSTT, we are mak­ing the nec­es­sary de­ci­sions now to po­si­tion our­selves for long-term suc­cess.”

In ad­di­tion to se­cu­ri­ty, the CEO said TSTT is fo­cussed on in­no­vat­ing in the fin­tech space to bridge gaps in fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion.

We’ve part­nered with the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre to de­liv­er the e-PAY Pay­ment Ag­gre­ga­tion Plat­form, en­abling seam­less, se­cure trans­ac­tions for busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als alike.

Through our soon-to-launch mo­bile wal­let, we are cre­at­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties for the un­banked and un­der­banked to par­tic­i­pate in the dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

Last month, we signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T& to make fi­nan­cial ser­vices more ac­ces­si­ble and in­clu­sive. By com­bin­ing our tech­no­log­i­cal ex­per­tise with the League’s ex­ten­sive reach, we  aim to de­liv­er in­no­v­a­tive dig­i­tal so­lu­tions to un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties.