The two earthquakes in Haiti and Chile in the early part of the year have raised questions in the telecoms arena about what countries could do in the future to be better prepared to deal with such disasters.

In both cases, the networks suffered serious congestion and in Haiti, more so than in Chile, infrastructure was seriously damaged.

There was a commendable international response from companies in the telecoms industry including Ericsson, AT&T, Intelsat, France Telecom and many others.

However, the international telecommunications union (ITU) said that preparedness is the key and that in the future governments need to have better emergency contingency plans in place.

When the sector is not carefully regulated during such situations, uncontrolled telecommunications use can actually hamper any rescue efforts, according to the ITU.

In the case of Haiti, many organizations including UN agencies, government organizations and the media came in with different types of telecommunications equipment. They switched on and started using frequencies that caused a lot of interference.

Haiti’s telecoms regulator Conatel, however was praised by operators for its openness to work with operators. The watchdog granted additional spectrum to both Digicel and Voilà on a temporary basis to help ease network congestion and help with the relief effort.

In Chile, authorities and operators set up a working group to propose measures that could help mitigate the impact on telecommunications networks in the future.

One proposal is to allow calls of one network to be roamed onto that of another that has been particularly damaged.

However, operators have been quick to dismiss such a suggestion saying that if one network cannot handle the spike in traffic, shifting it onto that of another hardly solves the problem.

Operators and market observers have been emphatic that mobile networks are not designed to handle a sudden increase in traffic that can rise 30%+ following such dramatic events. However, to build latent capacity to deal with such situations would not be economically viable and force operators to drive up costs for the end consumer.

More realistic suggestions include limiting the length of calls or prioritizing SMS and data traffic as well as setting up hotlines for exclusive use by government officials and emergency services. Inadequate and unclear communications between authorities in Chile was largely responsible for the delayed tsunami warning, which had devastating consequences.

At the end of the day satellite is the best option for rapidly reestablishing communication. Terrestrial communications networks will always have limitations in situations such as Haiti.  Demand for satellite equipment has rapidly risen following the earthquakes and not only public bodies and different countries but private sector industries such as retail that are now looking at satellite networks to help keep distribution lines open.

Other developments in telecommunications so far this year include:

CaribServe, a wireless broadband provider based on the island of St Maarten plans to launch in August a WiMax service based on Motorola infrastructure.

The company expects it could reach some 10,000 fixed wireless subscribers in two years compared to the current 7,000-8,000.

The service will be offered in the 3.5GHz band initially on the Dutch side of the island, where the company has 65% of its subscriber base, with service to follow in 2011 for the French side.

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The completion date of the Caribbean's Seahorse-1 undersea cable project being developed by Triton Telecom, a subsidiary of Cobian International, has been pushed back by yet another year because of modifications to the route.

Phase 1 of the optical ring circling the Caribbean from Miami was originally due to start operation in January 2010, but is now due to be completed in January 2011 and the whole ring to be completed in early 2013.

Seahorse-1 was originally designed to link Miami with Isla Verde in Puerto Rico, and later Cacique in the Dominican Republic with a branch line to Jamaica.

However, after realizing that the Miami-Puerto Rico route is eligible for US stimulus plan funding, Cobian decided to wait and apply and go ahead with another section of the route first.

The company decided to do a direct route from Miami to Kingston, Jamaica, instead of just a branch. From there the optical ring will continue from Ocho Ríos in Jamaica to the Dominican Republic, and then on to Puerto Rico and Miami.

Another development that influenced the change of route was Jamaican utilities regulator OUR's opening requests for application (RFA) process for two licenses to build, own and operate a submarine fiber optic cable carrier facility.

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Jamaican utilities regulator OUR is seeking a consultancy to carry out a feasibility study on the cost and benefit of implementing number portability (NP).

OUR obtained financing from the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) operated by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The consulting firm would be required to assess international experiences with NP and identify and assess all possible technical options for its implementation on mobile and fixed networks in Jamaica.

The Dominican Republic became last year the first country in the Caribbean to implement NP.

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Broadband-over-power lines communications technology provider IBEC launched a smart grid BPL pilot program with Puerto Rican public power utility Prepa.

The network will not be used for providing internet, only for running smart grid devices. IBEC will provide high-speed communications over medium and low voltage power lines to test IP based smart grid energy monitoring and administrations systems.

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AT&T plans to invest US$84mn in introducing 105 new cell sites to increase the capacity of its 3G network in Puerto Rico.

The investment is part of the consolidation of the acquisition of Centennial Communications, which is due for completion by the end of the first half of this year.

AT&T is investing US$18bn globally in fixed and wireless infrastructure. The company has said that the investment is part of its migration toward LTE.

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Suriname's largest bank De Surinaamsche Bank has become the country's first financial institution to deploy an m-banking solution, using technology from MoadBus and Vasco Data Security.

MoadBus is a provider of financial software and services and Vasco provides authentication and e-signature solutions.

The m-banking solution allows bill payment and two-way actionable alerting features. It is supported by an authentication and security mechanism integrated with Vasco's digipass transaction signature.