Speaking in Bridgetown, Barbados on Monday, Edmond Mansoor, Antigua & Barbuda's Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Information, Broadcasting and Telecommunications, said that bringing broadband technology to the masses at an affordable price is a major challenge facing the Caribbean Community.

Mansoor was at the time speaking as part of a panel of Ministers at the 23rd Annual Conference and Trade Exhibition of the Caribbean Association of National Telecommunication Organisations (CANTO).

"Providing broadband technology must be at the very centre of ICT development today. It cannot be simply about the connectivity of the elite where some people walk around the town with their GSM phones and Blackberries", Mansoor told the conference.

According to Mansoor, the information that is available to Telecommunications Ministers of the region shows that the people at the lower end of the socio-economic scale are not just paying more for their broadband technology but they are in fact receiving less bandwidth. This, he indicated, translates into the poor paying more for technology.

Minister Mansoor also told the gathering that there was a direct relationship between the rate of broadband connectivity and the rate of growth of the GDP of any country. He also indicated that there was a direct relationship between access to broadband technology and a reduction in poverty.

History was made recently in Antigua and Barbuda with the landing of a new submarine fibre optic cable. The fibre optic cable is providing the Government and people of Antigua and Barbuda with access to inexpensive broadband technology, Manossor said.

The Government of Antigua and Barbuda says that it has committed itself to promoting affordable access to ICTs, so as to ensure that the benefits of ICTs are more evenly distributed within the twin-island nation.