BVI News

Tomas Lamanauskas, CEO of the TRC

Today the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) announced the implementation of the Interim Works Procedures.

The procedures set out steps to be followed by all licensed telecommunications providers in the Virgin Islands when carrying out installation or maintenance operations on outside line plant, whether underground or aerial (“Works”).

Any Works that may require civil engineering works and/or potentially interfere with the normal flow of vehicular traffic or pose physical threats to pedestrians are included.

The objectives of the Interim Works Procedures are threefold:

a.    ensure that the general public is given advance notification of Works activity that may affect their movements;

b.    ensure that Works information is passed on to other public suppliers and other utilities beforehand to enable coordination and sharing of infrastructure works thereby reducing costs of network deployment as well as disturbances affecting the public;

c.    ensure that the TRC is properly informed of all Works activity.

These procedures were developed by the TRC as an interim measure and will be superseded at a later date by a full Works Coordination Framework, which is currently being developed.

Tomas Lamanauskas, CEO of the TRC, commented: “ability to effectively deploy and maintain telecommunications networks is essential to providing state-of-the-art services demanded by residents and businesses of the Virgin Islands.”

“It is important to ensure, however, that the associated infrastructure works are conducted in an orderly and organised manner. It is particularly important to enable and facilitate sharing of costs of such works among telecommunications operators and public utilities. Such costs constitute a significant proportion of total costs of providing telecommunications services.”

“Therefore, more efficient investments will mean lower prices to users. Furthermore, it is important to ensure that disturbances to the public, such as closing of the traffic, are kept at a minimum.”

He continued: “We have issued these interim procedures so that appropriate coordination of works could commence as soon as possible. We will, however, continue working on a full Works Coordination Framework, which will ensure that benefits of such coordination are fully realised.”

• Home
• About
• Free Classifieds
• Columns
• Contact Us
• Caribbean News Links
• International News Links