Barbados to Become Fully Wi-Fi Accessible by November 2011
Barbados to Become Fully Wi-Fi Accessible by November 2011
Accomplishing island wide Wi-Fi access in Barbados by November 11, is the Barbados Entrepreneurship Foundation’s (BEF) first major milestone in its quest to make “Barbados the #1 entrepreneurial hub in the world by 2020”.
Speaking to a large gathering of entrepreneurs at the Plantation Garden Theatre last week during the 3rd monthly entrepreneurs’ forum Damian McKinney, CEO of the Foundation, revealed that the BEF was in discussions with major telecommunications providers LIME, Digicel and TeleBarbados and was working with these companies to create a technical proposal for Wi-Fi Barbados.
The project has been dubbed Wi-Fi Barbados - 11/11/11 and is scheduled to be rolled out on March 31, 2011. Originating from the BEF’s inaugural entrepreneurship Summit last November, the Wi-Fi project is being driven by the Foundation’s Business Facilitation Pillar, which is championed by Melanie Jones, partner and head of the International Business Practice of Lex Caribbean, a regional law firm.
McKinney said the Foundation was “reaching for the moon”. Wi-Fi Barbados, he noted, is just the first small step in that direction “and we will get there,” he added confidently. He stressed the importance of stakeholders in achieving the BEF’s goals, saying that businesses needed to unlock the padlocks on their Wi-Fi to help make the project a success.
One such a pioneer in offering free Wi-Fi at its cafés is Italia Coffee House. General Manager of Italia, Cecil Yearwood, said that the provision of free Wi-Fi “improves the customer experience and gives us a different demographic of customer that we would not normally see, and improves customer stay and spend in the shops.”
With this accomplished, Barbados will be the first country in the world to have total Wi-Fi access “from bus stop to rum shop.” Achievement of this goal will have tremendous marketing benefits for the island, especially in tourism. It will also seriously enhance business facilitation and our credibility as a nation where everything works first time, every time.
