Chief Executive Officer Leon Williams at The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) admitted that previous investments made towards addressing the issue of dropped calls and data disruptions for cell phone users were not as effective as officials thought they would be and announced recently that the company will redirect it focus and invest $65 million towards upgrading and repairing its mobile and land wire networks.

Mr. Williams said the company seeks to have to those issues resolved by the end of next month.

“BTC over the last couple years have made some investments in the network but sometimes in my opinion it was like taking a candle to boil an ocean and so now we’re a little bit focused on what we’re doing,” he said.

“Over the last couple of weeks we have been migrating the network, the wire line fix network from a legacy line network to a next generation network. We’re trying to install an additional 20-plus cell sites as we speak trying to do the proper acquisition to build the towers to install those cell sites to be able to address the drop call situation. The customers in New Providence will begin to feel some of those changes by the end of October or early November.”

As BTC moves to upgrade it services, Mr. Williams told reporters that the company is also pumping thousands of dollars to pay off fines that were levied against the company by the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA).

A few months ago, URCA discovered that BTC violated two sections of the Communications Act and therefore fined the company nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

The fine stemmed from a complaint filed by the Systems Resource Group (SRG) which accused BTC of executing exclusive supply agreements with wholesale businesses that prohibited them from selling SRG’s Indigo cards.

“The $244,000 fine for anti-competitive behaviour has been paid, we’re also paying the $850,000 utilities appeal tribunal fee, over the last week we have written some cheques for almost $1 million to URCA.”