INTERNET SERVICE NEWS FOR WESTERN BELIZE (March, 2010 )

Internet News for Western Belize in March, 2010 )


It is looking like both BTL and SMART will be knocked out of the internet business, this year, by the CABLE TV internet service.

At the moment, SMART is the top dog, internet provider in the TWIN TOWNS of Western Cayo District of Belize. The speed is low and the bandwidth way too small for demand.
As the only internet service provider in our section of Santa Elena Town, SMART is what we use. We have been having trouble with the service and recent events and an amateurs, tracing of the problems; seems to indicate that the problem lies not with US internet networks, but locally here at home with SMART. I fear that recently as yesterday morning, when trying to run the software website involved with our business, we kept getting TIMED OUT disconnections and messages that said " cannot connect to remote computer" when trying to reload. We believe, but are not sure, that the problem is that we are not getting the full software of our broker site in Chicago loaded onto our computer and thus the 30 second changing STREAMING DATA we need to function does not have what it needs to work. We were into some data for about 2 hours yesterday morning during working hours 7a.m. to 9 a.m., but not what we needed to function and could not access our ORDER PAGES at all. Later in the morning after trying and trying to reload, we finally disconnected SMART and then re-accessed the web site and took the 20 minutes or so it takes to load the software over the internet again, using SMART DIALUP, Verizon wireless and succeeded in getting our streaming data and almost, but not all of the brokers web site we require to operate our business. In conclusion: we surmise that the problem lies with our local internet provider SMART, because of insufficient bandwidth and speeds, to properly load modern business complex software.

Out here in Western Belize area, the Belize Telecommunications Company ( BTL) providing internet, still has the twin town centers, or the icing on the cake customers congestion of town center service for internet. But SMART is rapidly putting BTL out of business. The dark horse the rumor mill says, which is the Television Cable company is still pushing westward from the coast and last I heard by the rumor mill, had passed Spanish Lookout and was approaching Bullet Tree Falls and would eventually soon reach the Twin Towns. I've used the internet FREE SERVICE at Caribbean Tire in Spanish Lookout and it is superb. I'm only guessing that is service from the CABLE company? I heard a rumor that it was 2 gigabyte speeds, compared to the 5 to 7 kbps we actually are getting with our current SMART internet service provider. Either way, as a customer I will switch to wherever I can get the best quality service at the lowest price whenever it comes.

It does look like the cable tv company is going to run both BTL and SMART out of the business. That is what competition in the free market place is about.