WestStar starts fibre network rollout

The Cayman Islands will take a technological step forward soon with the rollout of an optical fibre to the home network by WestStar TV. 

The ceremonial ground breaking for the project, which took place on Tuesday, 1 May, was attended by Premier McKeeva Bush and members of WestStar’s executive team. 

“I am indeed pleased to learn that the intention is to provide faster, higher quality and more reliable service to the company’s customers,” said Mr. Bush. “A lot is at stake here – on the one hand our reputation as a sophisticated regime where world businesses can conduct their operations with ease, on the other hand our people must be able to reap the benefits of such sophistication.” 

According to Rod Hansen, chief executive officer of WestStar, the fibre to the home network will be a big upgrade for the Cayman Islands. 

“We’re going to build a world class fibre cable television system here in the Cayman Islands and it is going to keep the Islands not only up to date but ahead of 90 per cent of the markets in the world,” he said. 

Mr. Hansen said the fibre to the home project would include Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. 

Jeremy Elmas, vice president of WestStar TV, said the implementation of a fibre to the home network will hold numerous advantages for consumers. 

WestStar will be installing a gigabit passive optical network, which promises to provide not only improved quality of service but also improved reliability. 

“With a passive optical network there are only two active devices – the one is at our premises and one is at the customer’s premises, so there is nothing in between that can go wrong, apart from someone actually cutting the cable or an accident taking down a pole,” said Mr. Elmas. 

Although there will be an improvement in the quality of the images delivered, the main change consumers are likely to notice initially is an increase in available content. 

“There will be more, that’s really the difference. At present, we are pretty much full on the wireless side, we have a little room to manoeuvre but not a lot, so for all intents and purposes there will be unlimited capacity,” said Mr. Elmas. 

The technology will also allow the provision of high speed data services over the fibre network, offering the potential for greater download speeds than can be achieved currently. 

“We actually recently requested and received permission to offer data services so we are working down that avenue as well. I think everyone will agree that running multiple services over one cable definitely creates economies of scale,” said Mr. Elmas. 

“The system that we’re putting out is a typical gigabit passive optical network system, so 32 people will share 2.5 gigabits, that would be the max, but of course the off Island bandwidth gets a little pricey so they probably won’t want to pay for that amount of speed.” 

However, he did point out that even though the fibre network has virtually unlimited capacity, there could be other bottlenecks limiting the data rate that can be achieved off Island. 

Mr. Elmas said that the improvement this will offer in telecommunications infrastructure should serve as a driver for the economy in that it will make it easier to run a small business from home or telecommute. The creation of the infrastructure can also serve to retain companies based here and attract others to invest. 

“We’re very excited about the impact of this not only on our own future but also on the future of Cayman, the growth of the country. It will be really exciting to kick it into high gear,” he said. 

According to Vanessa Hansen, marketing manager for WestStar, the fibre to the home project shows the company’s commitment to the Cayman Islands. 

“It is a big investment for WestStar, but it shows WestStar’s belief in the Cayman Islands’ community and that there is a lot of opportunity for more growth,” she said. 

The process of putting the network in place was started two weeks ago, but as it is still early in the process, Mr. Elmas said giving a firm date for the completion of the network is difficult. 

“We want to have the Island covered as quickly as possible – I would say that we will have virtually all of Grand Cayman covered by the end of next year. There are a lot of things that can change in the field – if we go out there and we can’t get the production rate that we anticipate, then we will have to extend that,” he said.