Issues and Answers - Quality of Internet Service in Saint Lucia Part Two (Sept. 14th 2026)

[music] Heat up [music] here. >> [music] >> Welcome to another edition of Issues and Answers, a production of the Government Information Service. I'm your host, Shelton Daniel. We are continuing our conversation about this very interesting and if I may say so myself, important subject of the quality of internet service in St. Lucia. Are we where we need to be? Are we where we expected to be in terms of how internet is needed and has long been projected to support St. Lucia's development in a multiplicity of areas? We hear about the knowledgebased economy. We hear about advances in education, informatics. You know, so much of this depends on having a strong, stable, robust, reliable. You know, the descriptors are endless when it comes to internet. Well, to help us unpack uh these issues and subjects with his expertise is a private sector um self-employed ICT consultant. Has to be an expert. So, we say welcome to Dr. Lindel Sinville. Thank you so very much for being with us and I do hope I got it good about you. So much can be said about your credentials but we try to condense it. >> Thank you very much Shutton for your warm welcome this afternoon. >> Okay, Dr. Ville, I'm going to juggle the sequence in which I may have supplied you um with the the questions and so on. Sure. >> But investments in internet um architecture and infrastructure, whether it is cell towers, whether it is fiber optic cables um the subc or submarine ones and so on. It's not something that you just grab out of thin air. You have to make investments in them. And now we hear about Elon Musk and his Starlink and and and what they can bring. Tell us about investments in internet those that you aware that we have here. And if you were the one who were um tasked with giving recommendations, those that you'd recommend that we need to get into especially those that we need to do quickly, please go ahead. >> Thank you. Well, yes, I'm aware of the various different platforms that internet service is supplied via and Elon Musk's Starlink constellation. The [snorts] satellite internet is actually quite a new entrance into the market, quite popular and I think we have an interesting future ahead and no I've not been involved in any way in the establishment or the advising on how or why we should configure or set up any different service. I'm just a regular consumer from that perspective like you and the listener. >> Okay. I won't ask you to provide details of what your consultancy um has been tapped for and so on, but I thought as a consultant maybe you know you would have been at least aware of of of some of those uh conversations. >> Well, I think generally speaking my customers may be interested in what would be necessary, what would be sufficient for them to have reliable, robust, dependable service for their needs. Mhm. >> So beyond that I really would not want to speculate more broadly about other enterprises, governments etc. >> Okay. >> Because one person's needs might be very much dwarfed by someone else's requirements. So it's quite a variance. It's a bit a mixed bag if I could put it that way. [snorts] >> From the consumer or end users point of view, Dr. inville. Uh how do you think I mean what criteria do you think should be applied when we attempt to judge or or evaluate or um what we loosely call the quality of internet service in St. Lucia? What are um the values that we would um point to or pick at and say okay these are the things that we need to look at to say okay we have a good quality internet service um in in in St. Lucia. That's actually a very good question. It's got some technical underpinnings and I'll just be very brief. There are three key areas that one would consider. The first and foremost would be the raw speed. People almost enjoy having the bragging rights having a faster connection than the next person. >> That's actually quite an important criterion. But there's some something else which I believe goes hand inhand with just the raw speed. When you regard the quality of the service, the reliability can be measured by what you consider the latency. Latency for the audience is a measure of how how regular the connection is. Whether if you're having a telephone conversation for example, if the connection stutters, if you have you wait if you have to wait for some sort of buffering >> from one moment to the next, that's actually quite a severe and very easily noticeable aspect of the quality. >> Listening to you, it sound like we can have internet that is performing as if it needs to catch its breath. [laughter] >> Exactly. Exactly. >> All right. And I actually believe that if the latency is not managed, >> that would be a much more significant impediment to the enjoyment of the internet service. when I speak to someone in in in Europe some time ago, a broadcasting mentor/tutor and he says to me when I say you know downloading these things is taking a bit of time for me because we don't have you know that internet speed here you know to you know he was surprised at some some broadcasting videos he sent me and I told him you know it was taking a while and so on and his answer to me at the time was he said I really can't relate to you I'm sorry that you're going for But as a European, I can't relate to you because we have internet here that we take for granted. It's blazingly fast. It's got great bandwidth and so on. Can we ever expect that we are going to have um internet service that is on par with that is comparable to what's available in Europe or is it a little flight of fancy that we need to um kind of you know [laughter] >> temper our expectations? >> Exactly. I believe once the internet service is at a certain minimum speed, we have sufficient bandwidth, >> then anything more is simply for us to be able to download movies faster, >> stream higher quality videos, but it would be sufficient if we get to a certain minimum threshold. M >> I think when you look at downloading the entire library of Congress within minutes versus within hours that's purely something you'd use for comparing speeds or as I said >> it's a purely academic exercise you say. >> Yes. And [clears throat] for bragging rights. How fast is your connection versus your neighbors connection? >> I have a friend who was living in Japan and he said to me I'm going back over 15 years. He did not rent movies. He streamed them via his internet service. So back in the day, you buy or rent a DVD, take it home and watch your movie. >> He said no, he did not do that. He streamed his movies in high def. And that's going back maybe close to 20 years. >> Mhm. >> So I think nowadays we probably enjoy something close to that because everyone has Amazon, Netflix, or the other competing services that are out there. So your experience versus someone who's in a country where the quality of service is far higher than what we have here. It's something we have to live with. There are parts of the world where they'll be suffering compared to what we are enjoying. >> So like I said once we have a certain minimum quality then I think we should more or less be satisfied. >> Are we are we at that are we at that stage? Are we in that place now as someone who is familiar with the industry, who gets the feedbacks, who who has the vibes and so on, are we in a place where we can say, well, we okay, you know, we we ain't doing too badly. Yeah, >> I think so. I think generally speaking, we are okay. Mhm. But of course there might be persons whose work whose needs might take them to a place where what we are currently enjoying on average is not quite matching their needs. >> So there's a spectrum regarding what's average and what's available top end. >> You'll always find that there are persons who are saying they'll want more, they want better, they want faster. >> Okay. Might it be that as a consultant the the clients that you are most often um engaged with are not those who are likely to have you know those issues. The person individual with mo mobile internet prepaid and so on who [snorts] it may not be all that great because of affordability what they can afford and so on that Dr. Lindel Stainville is someone who would be dealing with industrial commercial. I'm I'm not saying you are um but then your exposure would not be to that side of the market that would be struggling with those things or is it just a a good general evaluation of of of of the state of play in our country? >> I would say broadly speaking a good general evaluation. >> I could share with you a certain aspect to how we use the internet. >> Mhm. For most of us, we have an internet supply via one provider or another provider. >> So that comes in the form of a connection to a box in our homes or in our business places. >> We typically call that a Wi-Fi router or modem or something along those lines. Once the internet service arrives on your premises, the next issue we have is the distribution within your premises. >> Ah, good. Okay. And I think it's important to make that distinction because you may have a very good supply coming into your premises, but for one reason or the other, the way it's distributed within the office, whether it's via a wired connection or via Wi-Fi, more commonly than not, there may be issues arising after you've got the connection via the Wi-Fi, not what was provided by the service provider. Mhm. >> And I think for many people, they don't look at how the internet was received on their mobile phone or their smart TV or their smartwatch or whatever. If they have a poor quality service at the device, they might be instinctively blaming the service provider. But really and truly, the service provider's responsibility ends at the point where the supply enters your premises >> as is the same way that Wasco's responsibility is at your meter and and and and Lucille and thereabout. So maybe you have inadvertently answered the question which has royd my my mind and that of others that you're in a relatively small space, your own house, um one two-bedroom, you know, apartment or whatever or small office. You you're sitting here, you're getting great internet. You move over to to to the bathroom, you know, a few feet away, you know, and then it's gone or it's so weak now, it might as well not be there in in an office. you you you find it remarkable um the spaces that you you go to and then the the signal has dropped. You do mobile you you go you park somewhere let's say Ganters Bay down there and then you realize there's a a great difference between being by the VG sports complex or a house or administrative center and you slip across to Gantas Bay and like you know signal gone you you cannot even do a basic WhatsApp call and so on because you don't have it. So you were saying that these things really um they are the vagaries that we are to expect and accept is is that you didn't say that but I'm I'm just asking >> those are the vagaries that yes we can expect >> I don't think we should accept it if we have the ability to influence how the internet service how the delivery end okay after the service provider >> how that's supplied. So, for example, in an office environment, you'd expect, I would hope that whether you are at the front door or near the back room, >> that the quality of service that everyone enjoys is sufficient for the work that they do. Let's take a hospital building. We look forward to the point in time where we have mobile health service. We have a doctor coming to see a patient in one ward in the hospital at the front end versus another ward at the far end. If that medical professional is using a device, a tablet, >> and the quality of service is not as good as it is from the first ward all the way down to the last bed in the last ward, something is wrong with the way that the system was set up. And that's not something that we should be so sanguin about accepting. So I believe if we are conscious of what the service should look like when it is being used then we should be in a position as well to demand to expect and ultimately to set up to configure how the consistency of the service throughout >> is made available. >> All right. Um therefore I have to go back to the question of investments. This is a 238 square mile island. Um, yes it has mountains, yes it has valleys, it has forest and all of that. What prevents a small land mass like this? Um, yes it has dispersed settlements and communities and so on. But what prevents it from being adequately superfluously with excess capacity blanketed you know with with with internet um you know um reception and and and signal and so on. What what is what is the problem? I mean we've been investing in in towers in cell towers. I don't know if the cell towers are the same as the ones that will push I thought it was the same radio signal 238 square miles. Why should we have those how do you call those spots? those blind blackout spots or whatever it is where you just don't get any service or signal in that area. It's a small land mass. >> It is true. I think geography is a very large factor here. >> Mhm. >> If you consider the internet service that we enjoy in a hilly a mountainous place like St. Lucia or Dominica, St. hit somewhere with lots of hills and valleys like you said >> and you compare that to the experience of someone living in a place where it's flatter somewhere like Barbados for example [snorts] >> you'll find that an installation a tower is able to connect >> okay adequately to a much larger zone >> okay hold that thought it's a very interesting one so whether you're in Barbados or whether you're in Dominica maybe St. can be viewed as an in between um the geography you just can't escape. You're watching issues and answers a production of the government information service with me Shelton Daniel. My guest private sector self-employed ICT consultant Dr. Lindelville has moved us into a very interesting phase of this discussion which we want to continue after this break. You can't afford to go away. 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And if so, what are some of the areas that we need to look at to find out whether it's our expectations that are maybe a little bit offaxis or whether in fact they're genuine causes that need to be looked into and it will be progressive in terms of the improvements and fixes that are applied. My guest on this edition is Dr. Lindel Sinville, an ICT consultant who is self-employed in the private sector and has been sharing his perspectives with us. before the break he was talking to us about the natural geography that you just can't escape it has an impact if it is flat and he referenced Barbados and maybe we can um transpose that into the local scenario if you're talking about the general viewport area or some areas of Cas which you know are not really impacted by the mountains and the geography um the extent of the signal its accessibility may be quite a different thing than if you are dealing with areas that heavily um mountainous and um have forest and barriers natural and otherwise in them. Thank you so very much for being with us again. Um Dr. Sinville, here in St. Lucia, um we pin a lot of things, a lot of our hopes um post the banana industry on how we can diversify the economy and branch off into into areas um informatics, financial services. Um right now we can go to gas stations and we don't have to worry too much about the bank notes in our wallets and and and taking them out. We can just tap them etc. So there is ease of doing business um freedom of trade and and so on. Do you see other areas that internet access and internet availability is something that in your consultancy you can see it opening up vistas of opportunity and development for us that we need to point to. >> Thanks for the question. I think it's a relevant one. I think teley commuting is a big one. Mhm. >> And you may have noticed that since the advent of co back in 2020 19 2020 >> region >> 21 >> a lot of our work happened online and I think it's a great credit to the telecoms providers that that huge volume of work which went from face to face in an office went online education went online for the most part and the service may have functioned I think adequately even during that significant switchover. What that tells us is that is that the internet service providers have the capacity to help deliver reasonable service even on the load that can help us to conduct our economy our activity in a way that we would find it reliable. So I think that's a good point to be made in terms of what we could use internet service for and maybe broader better internet service >> that we are not presently doing and not on any significant scale. Yes. >> The one I think that comes to mind and it might be a niche area >> is online gaming. >> I'm not sure that we have any notable examples of competitive online gaming which takes place. Well, we may have had I can tell you as someone who who lived and worked in Antigga, they they ran into a problem where they had an online gaming industry that was thriving, that was doing quite a lot and that was in every sense of it all legal until America realized that they were making a bit of a buck from it. And then they claimed that whatever the agreement that was negotiated under under the WTO or the GATS whatever um did not really intend for online gaming to be. So they basically blocked all the sites that Antiggon Barbida was using for its online gaming shut down their sector and caused them. Antiggon Barbara took the matter to the WTO and in a three-stage dispute resolution process it warned at every step of the way. But might is right. the United States is powerful and so um Antiggon Barbida lost that industry despite them being ordered the WTO ordering America to compensate Antigan Barbida at a cost of $21 million US per year for every year that they knocked them offline. They never did give them anything. So yes, there is an opportunity in it but you know the politics and the politics of power and might and so on it may not be. I'm just I'm just drawing that for reference. So maybe if you can think of some other example and so on. We started I think talking about the whole Elon Musk um phenomenon and the Starink and so on. Is is that something that might be in any way relevant to St. Lucia or would it be cost prohibitive on what you know? >> I believe that it's actually fairly affordable. M >> the stumbling block may be the regulatory approval that would be required for that sort of service to be made available. >> Mhm. >> Within our jurisdiction. >> Okay. >> I believe that satellite internet holds promise given that we are now in the hurricane season. If we have a fairly bad tropical storm or a hurricane which affects us, >> it may affect our terrestrial services at which point satellite internet may be what saves us if we have access to that particular service. >> Okay. >> So I think there is a place for satellitebased internet >> whether it's from Elon Musk and Starink or the Amazon competitor which is Leo I think coming on stream at some point. >> I would say the more the marrier. If you have the ability to pick and choose in an open market type economy, then >> these different factors and competitors have to work to get your business, don't they? >> Wonderful point. Maybe we are moving into the wrap-up phase now. But in terms of when the internet service is not up to par, it is not what people expect or have paid for or subscribed for and and believe should be delivered. What about mechanisms to compensate people? You know, your service dropped at this point. So, we are giving you some kind of rebate or or compensating you with some additional minutes or something of that kind. There doesn't seem to be any mechanism in that. And people are saying, look, if ever we come up short in anything, the company has its sophisticated systems to detect that we owe them and to take it. And if you don't have a means of paying it, well, forget it until you do. That service is not going to continue. But there isn't the reciprocity of when we feel we are owed for when the service is less than what it should be. What are your thoughts on that? Have you heard that? Is it something? >> I think that's something you'll experience in most places. Unfortunately, when we apply for and we pay for internet service, what the providers usually say is that we get up to a particular quality or speed. So for example, you might be paying for internet service up to 500 megabits per second. What that means is anything from let's say 100 to 500 that you receive, they can legitimately claim you got what you paid for, what you were expecting. The real problem comes though if you are continually and consistently getting well below what you were expecting. >> Mhm. And I think that's when one should be in a position to make a complaint that what you were expecting you're not getting. >> I can share with you and your listeners that some time ago I asked the NTRC the regulator to look at my internet service which is fiber based because I was not quite happy with the quality of service that I was expecting that I was getting rather >> and they were quite helpful. They came over, they installed some monitoring device onto my my internet box, my Wi-Fi router, >> and it sat there for several weeks. And apparently it was able to give them some real time, you know, statistics regarding my service. And after the I think 2 months elapsed, they came back, unplugged it, but they had the information they needed to be able to assess that what I was getting was >> either what they were expecting me to receive or not. >> I can't recall exactly what the final report was, but I believe it was satisfactory. >> So basically, it was a case that maybe you imagined it or maybe you were expecting more than what was legitimately um to be expected and so on. So I'm saying could it be that a lot of the complaints that we get are very subjective because you're saying when they objectively put something to read the data it it didn't show that you were being short changed. >> If I recall and if I may say nowadays we have so many devices which require Wi-Fi. So within the home, Wi-Fi for our internet connected devices. If you've got a family of let's say four people, everyone has a smartphone, maybe a smartwatch, maybe a tablet, maybe a laptop. We have smart TVs, smart fridges. Each one of those devices using the Wi-Fi to connect to the internet. They're imposing a load. >> Okay? And >> so what you might be expecting might not really be what is being drawn away from the various strands of of users within within that space. >> Indeed. And we might be causing congestion within our homes that ultimately degrades the quality of service that we all enjoy. >> All right. Thank you so very much Dr. Lindel Stinville um ICT consultant um for sharing with us your informed and expert um perspectives on this matter of internet quality. um in St. Lucia and um we wish you the best and we hope that um you know people will be enlightened in terms of you know what really are the issues at stake in this matter. This has been issues and answers with me Shelton Daniel. It's a production of the government's information service and you can look forward to having more programs as we delve into the perspectives and a lot of the involved issues for which we aim to provide you with answers as we trust we have done today. Until next time, goodbye. Heat. [music] Heat. [music] >> [music]