As part of the Dutch Kingdom, Sint Maarten – not to be confused with Saint Martin – is a popular tourist destination in the Eastern Caribbean, but not much is known about its ICT and telecoms space. Marvio Cooks, of Altospire, and a Sint Maarten citizen, discusses: what the telecoms and ICT is like there; the extent to which the infrastructure has recovered since Hurricane Irma, and some of the emerging ICT-related trends and opportunities.

 

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Welcome to another episode in our ‘Know Your Neighbours’ series. Staying in the northern part of the Eastern Caribbean, and the country we will be exploring is Sint Maarten.

Part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Sint Maarten, is located east of the British Virgin Islands, on an island shared with Saint-Martin, which is an overseas territory of France. Although the entire island is approximately 87 square kilometres (or 34 square mile), Sint Maarten occupies around 40% of the island, or around 34 square kilometres or 13 square miles, and has a population of around 41,000.

To a considerable degree, Sint Maarten’s economy is tourism-based, with visitors primarily from Europe, North America and the Eastern Caribbean. However, it was also one of the countries decimated by Hurricane Irma in 2017, which destroyed or severely damaged at least 70% of its buildings, and caused a total estimated damage at around €2.5 billion (USD 2.98 billion). As a result, and nearly three years later, the country – including its ICT and telecoms infrastructure – is still recovering from the devastation experienced.

 

Introducing our Guest

Marvio Cooks is the ICT Coordinator of the Division of Public Education, of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, in Sint Maarten. He is also the Founder of Altospire, a leads and project management consultancy, based in Sint Maarten. He has a background in Computer Science, from Florida A&M University, and is passionate Sint Maarten creating more technological producers than consumers.

With regard to Altospire, the company aims to help individuals and businesses find products and services that meet their needs. It prioritises sourcing locally, in order to bring more business to locally-owned business and freelancers.

 

Marvio Cooks

Areas Covered in the Discussion

As small as Sint Maarten might be, there was a lot of ground to cover in our conversation with Marvio., as some of questions we posed would suggest:

  1. Can we get a quick overview of Sint Maarten?
  2. How developed is telecoms and ICT in Sint Maarten?
  3. Since Sint Maarten and Saint-Martin share the island, how is infrastructure deployed?
  4. How accessible are telecoms and ICT services in Sint Maarten? Is telecommunications and ICT services affordable in Sint Maarten? How is the quality of broadband service?
  5. To what degree has the telecoms and ICT infrastructure been restored, when compared with what existed before Hurricane Irma?
  6. To what degree are the Government and private sector in Sint Maarten leveraging ICT?
  7. What is it like being an entrepreneur in Sint Maarten? What do you think about the country’s start-up environment/ start-up culture?
  8. If someone outside Sint Maarten wants to do business in Sint Maarten, what key steps would be recommended?
  9. What are some of the tech-related or tech business related-trends in Sint Maarten?
  10. What are the strengths of the ICT/tech space in Sint Maarten?
  11. What are some of the ICT/tech-related opportunities in Sint Maarten?

 

We would love to hear from you!

Do leave us a comment either here beneath this article, or on our Facebook or LinkedIn pages, or via Twitter, @ICTPulse.

 

Select links

Below are links to some of the organisations and resources that either were mentioned during the episode, or otherwise, might be useful:

 

 

Image credits:  Wikipedia;  neufal54 (Pixabay)

Music credit:  Ray Holman

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