Liberalization in Guyana as well as new pay-TV service offerings took the headlines in recent weeks, while more regional IXPs seem on the cards before year end.

After more than two years in the making, on August 5 Guyana's government made its first real concrete gesture toward liberalizing the telecoms market.

Prime Minister Samuel Hinds presented to the national assembly bills for a new telecommunications act and amendments to the public utilities commission (PUC) act to open and liberalize the sector, largely led by former government telco GT&T, which since 1990 has been controlled by US company Atlantic Tele-Network.

The new telecommunications act seeks to attract new market players, and improve the quality and variety of services. It will also create a new agency for frequency management and grant new licenses to GT&T, Digicel and some existing ISPs.

Digicel launched mobile services in the country in February 2007 but has felt restricted in the services it can offer given that its international traffic has to go through GT&T. Therefore the operator feels that the biggest benefit of the liberalization will be obtaining an international license.

In another regulatory development, Jamaica's Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) said it is planning to spin off its telecommunication division as a separate entity in an effort to keep up with industry growth.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding said OUR would establish a single regulator for the telecommunications sector, suggesting that the sector was evolved enough to require its own watchdog. OUR currently regulates telecommunications, transportation, electricity, water and sewerage. Local operators Digicel and LIME have backed the plan.

The Caribbean Telecoms Union (CTU) said it is optimistic that a third regional Internet Exchange Point (IXP) will be serving the English-speaking Caribbean by year-end, most likely in Dominica.

At the end of May, the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and Grenada both launched IXPs. Other countries that have begun discussions on IXPs are St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname.

CTU secretary general Bernadette Lewis said that Grenada and the BVI have already noted an impact on traffic since launching the IXPs.

Mchael Ashcroft, the former owner of Belizean telecoms company Belize Telemedia Limited (BTL) filed an injunction in early August in an attempt to prevent the government from amending the constitution to retroactively justify its nationalization of the company in August 2009.

In July, Prime Minister Dean Barrow introduced a bill for the ninth amendment to Belize's constitution, which would determine that all public utilities should be in the hands of the state.

Antigua and Barbuda's government has said it will intervene in an ongoing dispute between the island's main telecommunications providers - Digicel, LIME and APUA - that has disrupted calls.

The country's information, broadcasting and telecommunication ministry said that some customers had encountered difficulties in connecting incoming and outgoing calls between Digicel's platform and those of other main providers.

And the Cuban attorney general's office is investigating several senior executives from state controlled telco Etecsa for alleged corruption charges. Senior Etecsa officers have been arrested in connection with a fiber optics cable project financed by Venezuela. The so-called ALBA-1 system, is a US$70mn, 1,800km submarine cable being built between Venezuela and Cuba.

Moving onto new services, Cable Bahamas said it is has plans to launch voice over cable, video on demand, the country's first triple-play services and, potentially in the future, a quad-play offering.

In July, the company selected Nokia Siemens Networks voice over cable softswitch to start the country's first triple-play offering, which will be launched at the end of August.

As regards internet, the company said that it will increase broadband speeds in due course from the current offering of 3 Mbps, 6 Mbps, and 9 Mbps once it has deployed Docsis technology – due this year.

In the area of TV, this month the operator increased its HD offering from 12 channels to 60 and is also planning to introduce later this year video on demand.

And once the market is fully liberalized Cable Bahamas is keen to become a mobile operator. This year C&WC bought a 51% controlling stake of former government monopoly BTC and was granted a three-year exclusivity period for mobile to allow C&WC to prepare BTC for competition.

And staying on the area of TV, Dominican Republic telecoms regulator Indotel said pay-TV service penetration currently reaches 25-30% in the areas where it is offered but that there is still a lot of room to grow.

Satellite TV provider DirecTV has reached an agreement with Claro Puerto Rico to extend its offering of mobile broadband over the latter’s network. To date, DirecTV has been offering mobile broadband over the CDMA network of the former operator Centennial, which was acquired by AT&T.

The new offer is part of the US$13mn DirecTV has invested so far this year to expand operations in Puerto Rico.

And LIME Jamaica has launched its own mobile TV channel called "Peppa,", which is entertainment focused and available exclusively on LIME mobile TV, which was launched in December 2010.

Staying with LIME, the operator and Swedish telecoms equipment supplier Ericsson are empowering two schools in Jamaica through a regional cloud computing service partnership. Using a cloud-based operating system, called PC as a Service, Greater Portmore High and Kingston High schools will now have access to educational content selection available on the internet and deploy an ICT solution in the schools.

And Moody's Investor Service has changed the ratings outlook for LIME’s parent company Cable & Wireless Communications' (C&WC) Ba2 corporate family rating to negative from stable. Moody's decision is based on the operator's persistent weak operating performance in the Caribbean.

While three of C&WC’s business units - Panama, Macau and Monaco & Islands - performed well during fiscal 2011, the Caribbean division, which accounts for 35% of C&WC's consolidated revenues and 26% of its Ebitda, remains challenging due to continued weak economic conditions, Moody's said.