Significant Achievements on National Broadband Initiatives

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator the Hon. Kamina Johnson Smith, has said that work on the national broadband initiatives saw significant advancement during the 2022/2023 fiscal year.

Senator Johnson Smith informed that the emergency fibre-optic ring achieved almost 90 per cent completion, and approximately 118 additional public educational institutions were connected via the fibre-optic ring during the fiscal year.

This, she said, brought the total number of schools connected, to date, to 150 across eight parishes.

“Those connections required the installation of over 1,100 kilometres of fibre-optic cable at a cost of almost $1 billion. This year, the National Broadband Initiative has been allocated approximately $1.2 billion more to connect another 102 schools across six parishes and in particular St. James, St. Ann, St. Mary, Portland, St. Catherine and Clarendon,” Senator Johnson Smith said.

She was speaking on the Public Procurement (International Finance Corporation Advisory Services) (National Broadband Network Project) Order, 2023, Resolution, which was approved in the Senate on Friday (July 7).

The Minister noted that in addition to the fibre network, the Government, through the National Broadband Initiative, is also undertaking a massive activity on the microwave infrastructure that is designed to provide network resilience and redundancy to the fibre-optic backbone.

“Redundancy, when we speak about fibre optics and Internet, is about ensuring that we have sufficiency, that we have more, that we have an alternate route for data packs to run when one goes down. So, we are ensuring that we have a microwave infrastructure that works, especially during disasters, in the event of a fibre-optic break due to some catastrophe,” Senator Johnson Smith said.

She added that at present, Parish Courts and Municipal Corporations are connected to the microwave infrastructure and the most remote schools, which are more difficult to connect via fibre, will also be connected wirelessly.

“This upgrade represents $565.5 million of the $1.2 billion that is to be expended in this fiscal year. We have been reaping the benefits, the court administration system is benefiting from connection to the government’s network, the Jamaica Eye project was expanded into new parishes because of the network, and public educational institutions are benefiting from the network,” Senator Johnson Smith said.

She noted that 308 educational institutions with bandwidth lower than 50 megabytes have been connected to their own dedicated network, through commercial arrangements with telecoms providers.

The Minister further stated that an additional 289 schools are to be connected during this financial year.

The approval of the Order will allow for the immediate engagement of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to develop a business case in support of the establishment of the National Broadband Network Project.