NEW PEOPLE
I am pleased to announce that Andrea Tracey-Stone is our new Sales Executive. Andrea brings more than 10 years of experience in media business including print and broadcast mediums, and a lifetime of knowledge and experience of the Grand Bahama market. She also worked in Abaco for more than four years. Andrea is a great addition to our team and we are excited about being able to increase our ability to serve you better.

Also, we are pleased to have Rico Thompson on our team heading up our media production area. Rico is a multi-talented young man that has already taken on advanced video and audio editing projects, still photography and video shooting jobs. Many of you may know Rico for his performances at Regency Theatre and as the headlining act at the Thursday evening show at the Casino at Our Lucaya. Also, Rico is the on-camera host of our all-new original show, Island View (see more below). We are excited to have Rico bring his wide array of talents to the Keen i Media team.

NEW VENTURE
Many of you may have already heard about the ’soft’ launch of Grand Bahama TV (GBTV) on September 1st. We’ve had an amazing response in less than three weeks! GBTV is a 24×7 online TV channel that streams video content that is totally focused on Grand Bahama. We also offer more than a dozen shows available on demand — you start, pause, rewind and stop them when you want. We have theatre shows, documentaries, local features and news programmes that will help you keep up and stay connected to what’s going on in Grand Bahama in a unique and entertaining way. As we build our repertoire of exclusive shows on GBTV, such as our wildly popular Island View show and several other new projects on the way, we’re sure you will agree that Grand Bahama is finally going to get the exposure and entertainment that it has been sorely lacking. Click HERE now to start watching GBTV now.

GBTV also provides an entirely new outlet for advertising and promoting your business. Through everything from 30- and 60-second TV spots, to infomercials, to public service announcements, church services and many other options, GBTV makes a powerful new medium available to the masses at a drastically lower cost than traditional TV-based advertising. For example: a 30-second spot on ZNS TV in Grand Bahama will cost you around $100 per showing. A 30-second ad on GBTV can run for an entire month — with unlimited showings — for just $450. That means in less than a week of nightly showings on ZNS TV you will have already paid for a month on GBTV. It’s a great value. Write to us at ads@grandbahamatv.com for more details or to make a booking.

NEW CAPABILITIES
In the last month we have added two great new features and capabilities to our range of services:

• Multi-camera video switching: we can now cover events that require multiple cameras (up to four), such as church services, conferences, panel discussions, TV shows, training situations and more. We can do this with our fully digital (meaning, excellent quality!) video switcher and either record this to digital tape or stream an event live to the web on GBTV or do both at once.
• Audio Engineering & Amplification Service:  Need sound for your next event? A press conference or panel discussion? Birthday or cocktail party? Graduation? Grand opening? We’ve got all the sound gear and expertise you’ll need to make that happen. We can also provide digital recording and audio CD duplication and custom packaging service. We’ve got more than 25 years of in-house experience in sound engineering so we’re confident we can handle it.

And, of course, we can put these things together to deliver multi-camera video shooting and audio engineering with live web streaming or recording. Our light can also help illuminate a stage for any of the above type of events. We can make it all happen and at very competitive rates.

NEW PROJECTS
We’ve completed a few new projects of interest recently:

• Mentioned above, Island View is our all-new TV show that takes you inside some of the more interesting and unusual places in Grand Bahama. With a fun, upbeat and entertaining style, host Rico jumps right in to what’s going on so you can see how things work. Our first two episodes are showing now on GBTV and available there on demand. New episode coming next week!
• Early in August we were contacted by a New York production company and hired to shoot a celebrity photo shoot at Atlantis, Paradise Island. We didn’t know it at the time but we soon found out that the celebrity was actually Kim Kardashian, model and star of reality TV. The footage of the photo shoot was shot entirely by Keen i Media and was then featured on PEOPLE Magazine’s PEOPLE TV on their web site. Check it out by clicking HERE.
• A few months ago we established a relationship with The Counsellors Ltd, a well-respected and experienced media production company in Nassau, to produce Grand Bahama-focused segments for their TV show, Bahamas@Sunrise. Bahamas@Sunrise airs live on Mondays and Fridays at 6:30am, and Monday’s show is  rebroadcast on Wednesday at 8:00 a.m. and Friday’s show airs again on Saturday at 9:00 a.m. To date, Keen i Media has shot more than half a dozen segments for Bahamas@Sunrise, including two just last week which will air soon on national TV.
• GBTV News is on the beat! We are now covering locally relevant stories that we think you want to see, whether it is an announcement from the GB Port Authority about the new bridge planned for the Grand Bahama Highway or the crowning of a new Miss Grand Bahama, GBTV News is there to get the story and deliver the most important information to you. We’re constantly developing this service to provide greater coverage and we would love to receive your reports and video from things around town. This segment of GBTV News that we’re calling iWitness News can include your cell phone video or video from your home cameras. Just capture the news as it happens and we’ll get it out to the people! E-mail us at news@grandbahamatv.com.
• Keen i Media designed, produced and hosts the all-new web site for The Garden of the Groves, launched just last week. The new site features a number of great photo galleries, FAQs, and a high resolution downloadable map of the Garden. Check it out at http://www.TheGardenOfTheGroves.com.

STAY IN TOUCH
If you want to stay in touch with what’s going on in the media business and at Keen i Media in particular there are a few ways you can do that. You can follow us on Twitter (@keenimedia), become a fan on Facebook, read our blog, check us out on YouTube, or watch GBTV for our latest productions. Oh yeah, you can phone us (242-351-5339), visit us at our studio on Queen’s Highway (Orlando House, next to OBS Marine), or e-mail us (info@keenimedia.com), too (isn’t it funny how those things seem so…quaint?).

SOMETHING FREE!
It’s hard to find anything of value nowadays. But if you are interested in learning more about sales, marketing and the new economy, be sure to download the audio book called ‘FREE: The Future of a Radical Price. Click HERE [iTunes store link] to get it..for FREE.

Finally, if you are in range of Love 97FM (or click HERE to listen to their online stream) tune in this Saturday, September 19 from 10:00 to 10:30 a.m. when I will be the guest on ‘Nate Lewis in the A.M.’ talking about the arts and media in the Bahamas.

Take care,

~ejr~

At first I think, Oh great, as if I have time for this. Then, usually, I figure that my friend, associate or distant cousin of someone I met on Facebook is looking out for me. They don’t want me to get mugged by some vagrant in a parking lot, become a victim of a gang initiation or want me to avoid that ‘mayonnaise’ in that fast food chicken sandwich because it might really be pus from a tumour.

I appreciate the thought and the concern—really, I do, when it is genuinely intended—but, folks, seriously, let’s not just accept everything that passes in front of our eyes. The near instant nature of e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and text messages makes it just too easy to pass along something that is more than a little silly; and if we would just pause for a second to think about it we’d realise just how silly it is.

Perhaps it is because I am a photographer but I also often am forwarded photos that seem too freaky/cool/unlikely to be true—and there is a very good reason for that: they usually are too freaky/cool/unlikely to be true.

Sure, occasionally I’ll come across a photo that is genuine and awesome (like THIS series of authentic photos of a lightning storm in the middle of a volcanic eruption). But that’s far less often than the pretty-obvious-to-me faked photos (’fauxtography’) like THIS one of tourists about to be eaten by a very familiar-looking shark.

I get these e-mails pretty frequently, in fact, in the last year or so I have been getting a lot more direct e-mails outright asking me if something is real, as if I have some sort of special Web.bs filter, which I guess, in a way, I do. I would say the majority of the time I can tell at first glance when something just isn’t legit. The rest of the time I can usually find out in less than 60 seconds with a well-worded Google search or, more likely, a visit to Snopes.com.

Snopes.com specialises in discerning fact from fiction. They research the topic at hand, often speaking directly with those purported to be involved. They will publish a photo and show how it was faked (like our not-so-hapless SCUBA-diving tourists).

So, the next time you’re just not sure if stingrays really do migrate en masse in the Gulf of Mexico, or if Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was denied access to Disneyland in 1959, check it out on Snopes.com.

And stop bothering me!

The all-new original show, Island View, gets you inside some of the coolest/interesting/unusual places on the island.

The fast-paced TV show is hosted by Grand Bahamian Rico Thompson, who brings his own brand of enthusiasm and excitement to the screen. Rico is certainly not afraid to get his hands dirty, whether it is figuring out how aluminum recycling works or just how many puppies (well over 100!) are at the Humane Society of Grand Bahama’s shelter on Coral Road.

The show was launched on September 1, simultaneously with the launch of Grand Bahama TV, a.k.a. GBTV, which is Grand Bahama island’s first dedicated TV channel. The channel is currently streaming online 24 hours a day with many hours of news, information, features shows and entertainment from some of Grand Bahama’s finest performers. At the GBTV web site you can also choose from more than a dozen shows available “on demand”, including all episodes of Island View. Simply click on a show from the list and it begins to play immediately, and you can pause, rewind and fast forward. The channel plans to launch live TV shows in October.

To get a glimpse of what Island View is all about, watch the promo video below and then go to GrandBahamaTV.com to watch Island View’s first two episodes, with new shows coming soon.

Enjoy!

~ejr~

Take two things I love and put ‘em together: crazy/amazing technology and the Dallas Cowboys. And what do you get?

This HD TV makes your HD TV beg for mercy.

~ejr~

Most of the time there is no shortcut to success. Even so-called ‘overnight sensations’ usually have to work hard and long to get to the ‘sensation’ part; the ‘overnight’ could last years – decades even – until the critical mass has been reached.

We have been pleased to see a heightened interest in web-based content, even over the last six months since Christmas 2008. Subscribers to our weekly e-mail newsletters (Grand Bahama Info and Nassau Info) have increased dramatically, with more than 300 new subscribers added in just a few short months.

Even more significant has been the boom in the number of visitors that are drawn to BahamaIslandsInfo.com on a daily basis. We are always attentive to the many ways that people discover — or stumble upon —  BahamaIslandsInfo.com, because we want to be sure we are doing everything reasonably possible to get the word out about our web site.

We spend considerable time every day refining, improving and expanding BahamaIslandsInfo.com to make it more useful, more accessible and more accommodating to our web site visitors’ needs. We don’t just want you to visit our web site once, we want you to come back every day — several times a day! — to stay up to date with the news that affects you.

To help get the word out we focus on three main methods:
1. Make sure the content is relevant to those either living in the Bahamas or those that visit (planning to for the first time, planning to return, or those that live in the Bahamas seasonally);
2. Work hard at ensuring that the content is as current as possible; and
3. Pursue as many different external methods to spread the content and word around through other online resources.

Relevance is more than just seeing if the word “Bahamas” shows up in an article; any five-year-old that can spell “Google” can find thousands of articles and information about the Bahamas online. But sifting through the clutter to discover those that are the most salient and pertinent to people with a genuine interest in the Bahamas is the key.

Whether it is a shark attack or shark conservation, a serious crime or a new investment that will bring jobs and income to Bahamians, a government initiative that will impact our lives or a storm that will impact our homes, we strive to dig deep into the content that will be of greatest interest to our readers.

Some web sites will tell you that they focus on “the positive” side of life in the Bahamas; a valiant intention, to be sure. We wonder, though, how well informed their web site visitors will be after weeding through a clutter of flashing lights only to find half-baked feel-good anecdotes and press releases with little to no substance.

We respect our loyal web site visitors’ intelligence and maturity enough to believe that they are more than capable of enjoying informative and entertaining feature articles right along with the whole truth of the local, national and international news. We seek out reliable and legitimate sources for content, not the ill-informed or agenda-laden bloggers that try to pass off their bias as news and rumours as fact.

Sure, we get phone calls and e-mails telling us about something that seems incredible or newsworthy to some, but a few short questions later we can often determine that the source is questionable and the story is shaky; we take our responsibility to you seriously. We aren’t saying we haven’t (or won’t) make mistakes, but we work hard at trying to discern the truth and present it to you for your own consideration.

Our team and many of our frequent readers and contributors are constantly hunting down the information that we believe you want. And we listen to your feedback and pay close attention to the factual statistics on readership and clicks on articles. This tells us what people are seeking most. We use every tool available to us to watch out for trends and activity that we believe to be representative of our readers’ interests.

Ensuring that our content is current is just as important as making sure it is relevant. To be sure that current content gets to you as fast as possible, we post new articles every day of the week, even on public holidays and late into the night.

Every single week we repeatedly see articles that we have posted on BahamaIslandsInfo.com show up in newspapers and web sites days later. This is just further affirmation that we we not only are delivering you the right content, but we are getting it to you faster than most others on any given day.

We also use every available means to get the broadest possible visibility for our content; getting it in front of more people is a vital part of being a successful web-based service.

To accomplish this goal we have built relationships with other Bahamas-focused web sites that hold similar values of design excellence, content integrity and true relevance. One excellent example of such a relationship is BahamasLocal.com. This well designed and executed web site is a cross between a Bahamas search engine and a business directory; businesses can list their company information for free and there are options for enhanced listings for greater exposure. As BahamasLocal.com creator and co-owner Jason McDowall has often noted, the web site has given exposure to companies that otherwise might not get web visibility.

BahamaIslandsInfo.com delivers all the news content for BahamasLocal.com; not only does this enhance the content at BahamasLocal.com but it reveals the features and benefits of BahamaIslandsInfo.com to a wider audience.

There are several technology tools that we have embraced to help spread Bahamas news and information to a wider audience. Our Facebook page has touched a massive new segment of the online Bahamian community of over 50,000 people.  And our series of Facebook advertisements have been viewed more than 4.5 million times and drawn nearly 3,500 visitors to BahamaIslandsInfo.com.

Our news content is continuously picked up by Google News, with articles showing up in search results as little as four minutes after being posted to our site.

The content aggregator feature RSS (real simple syndication) is a way that many people keep in touch and up to date with the content across many web-based services. While some Bahamas-based web sites are just discovering this useful tool, BahamaIslandsInfo.com has been providing it since the day it was launched. (If you want to use our RSS feature just click the RSS icon near the top of the right-hand column of almost any page.)

Our most recent addiction…er, addition…to our technology tool arsenal has been Twitter. Still very much on the inclining slope of popularity, Twitter is an excellent way to get brief updates and info from friends and businesses online. On our Twitter feed (add us on Twitter @bahamasnews) you’ll get Bahamas news updates mere seconds after content has been added to BahamaIslandsInfo.com. When you spot a headline of interest you can easily click from the Twitter notification to jump straight to the full story. Hundreds of people follow us on Twitter and we have seen readerships stats jump by a factor of two or three for any article posted on our Twitter feed.

One of the great things we have seen over the last few months has been the substantial spike in other web sites around the world cross-linking to BahamaIslandsInfo.com stories that have particular regional, international and global interest. Web sites such as those operated by MSN, The Wall Street Journal (including a special section dedicated to President Barack Obama), and several Bahamas-focused travel web sites including About.com’s Caribbean Travel Blog, have all picked up articles from BahamaIslandsInfo.com that they believe their readers will find of interest.

These efforts have brought BahamaIslandsInfo.com to the place where it is now a significant contributing force in the Bahamas news and information sphere. Averaging between 1,000 and 1,500 visitors every day with traffic coming from dozens of countries and referring web sites, BahamaIslandsInfo.com has truly come into its own, just a year and a few months into its life. We thank you for helping to make that happen.

But all of these things, as effective and important as they are in operating a web-based service, are only truly effective if we know that our readers are satisfied and well-served by our efforts. We have always appreciated the encouragement, criticism and comments from you in the past and we welcome it in the future. Please write to us at info@bahamaislandsinfo.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and share your thoughts and your ideas.

~ejr~

But, as we examined before, claims of ‘millions of hits’ to a web site are most often an exaggeration of the facts and a distortion of what web server statistics actually mean. Such claims can also reveal the ignorance — or the deceitfulness — of a self-proclaimed ‘web guru’ that has just enough knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough experience to be trustworthy.

Besides spouting spurious stories about web site ‘hits’ (be sure to read our article discussing this in more detail) web site operators frequently boast about the incredible breadth of their web site traffic, claiming to be significantly ‘global’ and ‘international’; again this is more often than not designed to convince readers into thinking that that particular web site is more than just a hometown sensation but is instead some sort of worldwide phenomenon. They will often gloat about ‘millions’ of international web site ‘hits’ and minimise the number of Bahamas-based visitors, all in a deluded effort to inflate their own egos and mislead their readers.

Such claims are based on that web site operator’s misguided understanding of ‘country’ statistics that web servers generate.

Just as web site ‘hits’ are inherently inaccurate for determining a web site’s popularity, ‘country’ statistics are a sorely inaccurate basis upon which to boast. Country statistics are determined by two primary things: the top level domain (TLD — the portion of a web address after the ending ‘dot’, such as .com, .net, .bs, .ca, .co.uk, etc) of the requesting site and/or the reverse lookup of a person’s IP address. While this can be accurate it can be just as often inaccurate.

The reality is, any boasting of accomplishment based solely on web site statistics is a house built on the sand. It will soon crumble under closer scrutiny and honest evaluation.

When a web site visitor’s geographic location is determined using the TLD of the visitor (such as ‘.com’) then any sense of accuracy is immediately lost. How many people in the Bahamas use e-mail addresses ending in ‘.com’? Think: gmail.com, coralwave.com, hotmail.com or yahoo.com. Then, compare that with how many people utilise e-mail accounts ending in ‘.bs’ (can you think of anyone?) and you begin to get the picture. Associating a geographic location with a TLD is vastly flawed.

According to one web consulting firm’s glossary of web stat terms:

A country is determined based on the top level domain of the requesting site. Reporting of visits by country is inaccurate because there is no strong correlation between many top level domains (such as .com) and particular countries.

But, in reality, few web server stats use this method alone, but rather use the reverse IP address lookup method, which helps to compare a web visitor’s origin with a database of IP address allocations. This can help more accurately identify the geographic location of a web visitor, even to such granularity as the city from which they are visiting. But even this information can be severely skewed.

Here is one reason why this is the case: Without getting too deep into the technical details, major corporations design their computer networks so that all internal users must pass through their own routers which perform address translation from internal addresses to public external addresses. This conversion can make it appear as if all of those individuals are coming from a single IP address. This can even be the case for thousands of users from around the world that are connected remotely to their company’s network using such technologies as VPN (virtual private network).

Ford Corporation, for example, has over 320,000 users worldwide — but these could be counted as a single visitor from a single location outside Chicago. It is easy to see how this fact alone can cause web traffic information to be misstated, and there are others.

The moral of this story, then, is to view all web performance statistics through the discerning lens of skepticism and generalities. Don’t base your boasting on such an inaccurate and still evolving technology. As another Internet consultant put it:

• Web analysis is statistics, not accounting. Absolute precision is impossible.
• This inaccuracy is OK so long as you don’t get too excited about the fine detail.
• If you design your processes accordingly, the exact numbers shouldn’t matter too much. You are where you are today. You want to improve on this. The key to success is to concentrate on trends over time, not individual numbers.
• We have to accept that web analytics software is in its infancy.
• Life’s full of uncertainties and web analytics is no different.  Somehow we all manage to get by.

We believe that web site operators in the Bahamas should spend more time creating unique, interesting and compelling content and less time manufacturing tales of success and plagiarising original content from other writers and web sites and passing it off as their own. This, far more than spinning fantastic fallacies of figures, will lead to actual success.

LEARN MORE:

• Click HERE to read more about understanding web statistics
• ‘How to sell statistics to clients’ – sitepoint.com (Interesting to see the opening line of this article — almost identical to our first article — and this was published more than a year after ours! -Ed.)
• ‘Web Stats – The Truth About Hits And Visitors’ – freshbusinessthinking.com

~ejr~

Like technology? Like it when people make funky music with technology?

Then I have found the mother lode of music videos for you. Thank me later.

If that doesn’t make your heart race and your head bob, I have bad news. You’re dead.

~ejr~

Apple announced a new line of iMacs March 3, 2009

The iMac, for those unaware, is Apple’s all-in-one desktop Mac that incorporates the display, CPU, hard drive, optical drive and speakers into one slick, compact unit.

The iMac now comes in two primary configurations – the 20-inch and 24-inch versions – with three variations of the 24-inch model available. The 20-inch unit is a killer deal, making the Mac much more accessible for most families. That unit sells for just $1,199 in the U.S. and includes a 2.66GHz processor, 2GB of memory and a 320GB hard disk. That’s more than enough for any family  or small business. And of course all of them include iLife 2009, a sweet suite of software that makes any Mac sing (and more!).

But the big news is the starting 24-inch model which sells Stateside for only $1,499. In Apple’s official release they said, “For the same $1,499 price as the previous generation 20-inch iMac, the new 24-inch iMac delivers a 30 percent larger display, twice the memory [4GB] and twice the storage [640GB].” The two siblings of that unit offer greater storage and processor speed at $1,799 and $2,100 respectively. Click HERE to visit the Apple.com page about the new iMacs.

Apple also announced today a refresh to the Mac Mini and a new Mac Pro tower using Intel’s new Nehalem Xeon processors, calling it the ‘fastest Mac ever’. Sweet.

~ejr~

The simple answer: not at all.

(It is relevant to note that the Obama-led administration has been pushing to extend the digital transition time to June 2009 due to concerns that the general population is insufficiently prepared. We’re not convinced that extending the deadline will make much of a difference, but that’s a different topic. This effort was denied on January 28 by the U.S. House of Representatives when it failed to receive the two-thirds majority vote it required to pass. Click HERE to read more.)

The coming change in the United States affects broadcast TV signals; that is, only those signals which are transmitted over the air. Since we only have one broadcast TV station in the Bahamas – ZNS TV, and even that is only in Nassau – and ZNS has no known plans to change its transmission technology, the planned change in the U.S. has no impact on residents of the Bahamas.

Residents of the Bahamas receive their TV signals in primarily two ways: via cable or satellite. Almost all satellite receivers in operation in the Bahamas use digital transmission technology. All cable boxes in the Bahamas are now digital, as well. Basic cable signals – that is, those channels between 5 and 55 and that can be received on a TV without a cable set-top box – use analogue technology, and can be easily received and displayed by any current television with a standard built-in tuner.

But despite these simple basic facts, there remains a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about digital TV.

Part of the reason for the confusion is the coincidental rise in availability and interest in high definition television (HDTV). Many people mix up HDTV with the aforementioned transmission of TV signals using digital technology. A brief description of each may help distinguish the difference and understand how they do, in fact, overlap.

Digitally transmitted TV signals use a technology that converts a normal analogue TV signal into a series of ones and zeroes – the same kind of digital data that your computer uses to read and store programs and files. One of the primary advantages of using digital rather than analogue signals is the ability to squeeze more TV signals into the same amount of over-the-air signals (or frequencies). So, in a case where there would be only one TV channel being transmitted over-the-air, digital compression and transmission would allow three, six or even 10 different channels to be transmitted in the same frequency space.

Consumers like us gain the benefit of potentially more TV signals being available plus added features that can include more information being sent along with the TV signals, such as program information, sports scores, news and more.

But remember, these changes do not affect the way that residents in the Bahamas receive signals since, aside from those in very close geographic proximity to South Florida, an extremely small number of people in the Bahamas receive their TV signals using rabbit ears or TV antennae.

The changes in TV that the FCC have required in the U.S. have to do with providing a tuner inside the TV that is able to receive and display those new digitally transmitted ones-and-zeroes. Those that live in the U.S. will either need to buy one of those digital tuner TVs or they can purchase a digital-to-analogue converter that will let them continue to use a standard TV.

For those of us in the Bahamas that use a digital cable set-top box or digital satellite receiver we don’t need anything else and can continue to use the TV we now have, even if it is 25 years old. Those cable and satellite boxes receive and output the ‘normal’ signals that our TVs can display as they always have.

So, what about HDTV – is that the same as digital TV? Yes, and no.

High definition TV is so called because it using many more dots that make up the picture image – more than four times more dots (or pixels). More dots mean more detailed and more accurate images. Put a true HDTV image next to a normal TV (called standard definition, or SD) and the difference will be immediately and strikingly evident.

In order to see an HDTV image as it is supposed to be requires two things: a HDTV receiver that is capable of receiving and outputting a true HDTV signal, and a true high definition television itself.

And this is where ‘digital TV’ and HDTV meet: an HDTV receiver as described above is, by definition, a digital receiver. HD signals are transmitted as ones and zeroes as well – just many, many more of them to carry all those extra dots. But it is important to distinguish that you can have a digital receiver box (cable or satellite) that can be either standard definition (SD) or high definition (HD). Once you have a HD receiver box you must then have a HD-capable TV that can display that HD signal.

Here’s a tip for those that may be considering purchasing a HDTV in the near future: you can save several hundred dollars off the purchase price by selecting a ‘HD-capable’ TV rather than a ‘HD-ready’ TV. The difference is that the former does not have a built in tuner and the latter does. In the Bahamas, since we don’t have any broadcast (that is, over-the-air) HD television stations you don’t need a built-in tuner – your cable or satellite fulfills the function of the tuner.

Earlier we said that you need two things to enjoy true high definition television; in fact, there is a third thing that is required: high definition programming. This means that you will need to be sure that you subscribe to high definition channels from your cable or satellite provider.

There are other factors that affect digital TV and high definition television, but this will give you some basic understanding of the technologies and differences so that you can make more informed decisions. Got a question about this or some other related technology? Write to us at editor@bahamaislandsinfo.com and we’ll try to help you out.

• Visit the government sponsored web site: http://www.dtv.gov/
• Do I really need a digital converter box for my TV?
• Analogue to digital advantages
• How digital television works

~ejr~

Of course, few people will volunteer praise when they have downloaded three feature movies, two music albums and been online surfing for an entire night. Not many people will take note of the fact that in about 15 years we have gone from one marginal over-the-air local TV station in Nassau and a meager smattering of iffy cable channels in Freeport to over 300 different available cable channels. And does anyone remember dial-up Internet access?

As they say, you don’t miss the water ‘til the well runs dry. We have all become so accustomed to these services that we heavily rely on them for important parts of our lives; take them away and suddenly our worlds are shaken. We get that glazed look in our eyes as we try to accept that we might have to call someone on the phone or send a fax instead of sending a quick e-mail. The horror!

Yes, we have come a long way since those archaic days of dial-up and bunny-ears. On top of broadband Internet access available from at least two providers, we have two dozen licensed Internet service providers, hundreds of cable channels and (nearly) ubiquitous mobile phone service, we’ve got no less than a dozen private radio stations, two private (i.e. not government run) local cable TV channels (and another coming in January), an alternative home/landline phone provider, and a handful of respectable online news services. In short, there has been tremendous growth in telecommunications and entertainment providers in our country.

With this growth we have more choices, more competition and a more segmented market. In theory, competition should drive down prices, result in improved service levels, and deliver more employment opportunities for Bahamians. For the most part, this turns out to be true. However, there have been two areas that are currently held apart from any direct competition, and those are mobile telephony — held exclusively by BTC — and cable television — held exclusively by Cable Bahamas Ltd.

Cable Bahamas’ exclusive 15-year license as a cable television provider will expire in 2009. This could result in alternate cable TV services becoming available; these could be via a similar technology that Cable Bahamas employs or it could be some form of “wireless cable” such as MMDS or WiMax. While it is unlikely that another company will enter the market and build its own hybrid fiber/coax network, a wireless solution (likely with a lower number of TV services) could be a viable option, or another provider could actually use Cable Bahamas’ own network to offer a competitive service. BTC has been hinting for years that they have conducted network upgrades that would enable them deliver TV service to their customers.

The idea of privatizing BTC, formerly BaTelCo, has been in the air for more than 15 years, and serious steps have been taken to do so in the past. But each of these have failed for one reason or another, whether political, financial, technological or good ol’ fashion ill-preparedness. To be sure, the ever evolving Bahamas telecommunications marketplace has eroded much of the original value of BTC. Unlicensed, but widespread, services such as Vonage, Skype, Magic Jack, as well as licensed options such as Indigo’s OnePhone service have undermined BTC’s dominance and diluted its value.

Nonetheless, there are interested parties in purchasing the 51% of the company that the Government has proposed to auction off — and soon. To be clear, there are two stages to the transition that could lie ahead for BTC: privatisation (selling off the majority or controlling portion of the company to a non-Government entity) and liberalisation (the opening up of the areas of the telecommunications industry for competition that is currently reserved for BTC).

The Broadcasting Corporation of the Bahamas (which includes ZNS TV and radio operations) is also in transition at this time. Recent reports indicate that the BCB will see its oversight and regulatory authorities diminish and that the television operation will move away from any attempt at commercial viability to a public broadcaster framework. This will likely open up new opportunities for those in the private sector involved in television production services.

With all these changes — and more — looming it is no surprise that this technology evolution brings along a new focus on regulation, consumer protection and a legal structure to deal with disputes, lawsuits and breaches of licensing restrictions. Until now, the Bahamas Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has been the body that primarily managed the licensing of companies and individuals interested in radio, television, Internet, telecommunications and cable services. But, as these industries have developed and new technologies see greater adoption among the local market, there is a growing need to better focus on and address the issues that can and will arise.

The Government has appointed a Committee for the Privatisation of The Bahamas Telecommunications Company Ltd. This week, that Committee released a “Consultation Paper on the Issues and Options for Reform of the Regulatory Framework of the Communications Sector in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.” Behind that mouthful of a title is a brief but thorough outline of the Government’s proposed strategy to manage the transition of BTC to a private entity and to deal with the issues that are anticipated in a (somewhat) free market telecommunications industry.

The Committee has presented this document for the purpose of informing the public of its function and the various options that are being considered, and to garner real and direct input from the public on these matters. In a mostly non-technical manner, the paper explains and asks questions about:
- license fees
- technological neutrality (not favouring one type of technology over another)
- the requirement of infrastructure owners (such as BTC and Cable Bahamas) to allow third parties to utilise and interconnect with their networks
- the ability to move a phone number from one service provider to another (to allow consumers to move to a competitive service without having to change their phone number)
- a universal service obligation, to ensure that those living in the more remote areas of the Bahamas would still have access to a basic level of service (to be determined)
- and several other related topics.

We find many of these proposals to be decidedly progressive and globally in tune with other countries that have faced or are facing the need to create a more liberalised telecoms industry.

Perhaps one of the most important phrases and concepts we saw embedded in this paper was “…allow market forces to develop the market.” This idea, that the Government would not wield its authority over the market and heavy-handedly manipulate the flow of commerce which has happened in so many small countries in the world, is decidedly momentous, refreshing and exciting.

We encourage all of our readers to download and read the 19-page document [PDF, 164KB] and take advantage of this opportunity to respond and contribute to the issues and questions presented. If you care about such matters, and choose not to make your views known, then we believe you abdicate your right to complain about such things!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE DOCUMENT

~ejr~