December 23rd 2009
The Authority is inviting proposals for the design and administration of an organization wide employee opinion survey. The closing date for the submission of proposals is
 Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 2:00p.m.
more

December 2nd 2009
The Authority has taken action against three(3) entities for offences under the Telecommunications Act 2001.
more

November 27th 2009
Request for Proposals For the Design and Implementation of a Customer Satisfaction Survey.

The Authority is inviting proposals from suitably qualified organizations for the design and implementation of a Customer Satisfaction Survey..
more

November 13th 2009
The Authority will be hosting an ICT Open Forum on Wednesday 18th November 2009 from 3:00pm to 6:00pm. The topic will be  “Challenges faced in implementing and improving access to ICT’s in Trinidad and Tobago in an era of economic uncertainty.”
more

September 23rd 2009
All of the Application Forms for Radiocommunication Licences have been modified. Please note that effective December 14th 2009, applications will not be accepted on any older versions of these forms.

August 3rd 2009
The Authority hereby advises the public that until further notice, no applications for concessions on a 'first-come-first-served' basis will be accepted.
more

April 14th 2009
Notice of Determination of Markets

The Authority has made a determination of the relevant markets for domestic fixed voice telecommunications services, for the purposes of Section 29 of the Telecommunications Act 2001.
more

January 20th 2009
FINAL WARNING AGAINST USING SPECTRUM WITHOUT A LICENCE
more

OPENING ADDRESS BY MR KHALID HASSANALI, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS AUTHORITY OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO AT A RADIOFREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION SEMINAR, THURSDAY March 13, 2006, PREMIER QUALITY SERVICES LIMITED, MACOYA

Members of the Board of the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago

Dr John Prince Executive Director, Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago

Participants

Members of Staff of the Authority

Members of the Media

Ladies and Gentlemen

I want to first of all welcome all participants to this seminar titled “RFID technology…opportunities and challenges” hosted by the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago.

The Authority was established by the Telecommunications Act (2001) as an independent regulator for the local telecommunications and broadcasting sectors. One of the significant mandates of the Authority is to effect the orderly liberalisation of Trinidad and Tobago’s telecommunications and broadcasting sectors.

The liberalisation process is well underway as the Authority is committed to achieving its mandate.

The liberalization of the telecommunications sector ladies and gentlemen is a platform for facilitating the development and introduction of new emerging technologies in Trinidad and Tobago. Radio Frequency Identification technology, commonly known by its initials RFID, can be categorized as one such technology.

To date, the Authority has had several requests for further information on this technology.  Since RFID technology has the potential to significantly impact networks, society and the economy, and is rapidly being developed and deployed in several countries around the globe, it was considered important to address the requests for further information and to provide a forum for all potential stakeholders. This therefore was the main inspiration for hosting this seminar at this time.

Analysts predict that RFID will revolutionize areas of the industry such as supply chain management, security and mobile telecommunications services.  In fact it is said that RFID is expected to have a deeper user penetration rate than cellular mobile.  One may wonder how there can be more users of RFID than there are of mobile phones given the current usage of mobile technology in Trinidad and Tobago is currently over 800,000 subscribers.

RFID systems can facilitate object-to-object communications which can impact the creation of a ubiquitous networked society. This will lead to new demands on telecommunications networks.

Several countries are charging ahead in the RFID arena and some of the leaders include Korea, China and Japan, which is hardly a big surprise. The Republic of Korea expects the RFID sector to be as important as the mobile phone business and the government is expected to invest over $800 million US dollars on RFID systems in 2006.
Ladies and gentlemen it must be noted that in Japan due to the high kidnapping rate of children, a networked-RFID system to allow parents to monitor and track their children’s location has been successfully deployed. This way parents can ensure that their children are in fact en route to school and in school when they are supposed to be. This application may appeal to some of us given the crime current crime situation in Trinidad and Tobago. Once the challenges faced by the development of RFID technology are adequately addressed, RFID has the potential to offer a wide variety of personal safety and security solutions.

It is said that RFID is the next big little thing. The rapidity with which the RFID sector is expanding has resulted in the need to constantly upgrade knowledge bases. It is hoped that your organisations continue to evolve alongside the process of technology development and liberalization.

May I take this opportunity to thank you for taking time off to participate in this event, which I am confident would add value to your current individual and corporate knowledge bases.

 Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you.