Telegens executive director, Eugene Ffolkes, told the Business Observer on Monday that his firm "recently signed a memorandum of understanding with ZTE, to (jointly) bid on the islandwide broad band access network that will connect schools".

"ZTE will be our technical partner in this bid," added Ffolkes.  The Universal Access Fund Company - the agency which collects revenues from the universal service surcharge - invited qualified telecoms to submit proposals for providing the island with wide broadband network that would connect, through the Internet, 165 secondary schools, 41 libraries, and 79 post offices across the island.

The deadline for submission was to have been today (May 31), but has been extended to the end of June.  The Telegens/ZTE bid will face heavy competition from other firms, if UAFC managing director, Hugh Cross' expectation for the majority of the "ten companies that have purchased bid documents" to make a bid, is realised.

The project is to be funded by the universal service charge on incoming international calls - US three cents per minute on calls terminating on fixed line networks and US two cents on those terminating on mobile phones - which was aimed at raising $1 billion per year over the next three years For the first 11 months since introducing the tax on June 1, 2005, the Jamaican government earned $1.3 billion.

So far, $16.5 million has been disbursed from the fund to the e-learning company to cover administrative expenses, salaries and setting up of offices.  The government expect to disburse another $135 million to that entity over the next 12 months.

Telegens is a broad-band wireless technology provider, with approximately 300 corporate client locations.  The company is owned by Raymond Chang, the Jamaican-born chairman and capital partner in one of Canada's largest mutual fund management companies, and Howard Mitchell, former chairman of Jamaica Lottery Company, who invested $300 million in technology company to broaden its coverage island-wide.

The firm now has 85 per cent coverage of the island's population.

ZTE´s ADSL products have been deployed in over 30 countries and regions around the world, including France, Greece, Romania and Egypt, with an accumulated capacity of 15 million lines.  According to a 2005 Gartner Dataquest´s report, ZTE was one of the top three DSL providers in the world.  For 2005, ZTE reported a profit of 1.29 billion yuan (US$160 million) from US$2.68 billion in revenues, up slightly from 1.27 billion yuan (US$158 million) from US$2.56 billion in revenues the year before.

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