Are you planning a business trip or vacation to the Bahamas this fall? If so, you’ll probably want to bring along your PDA or cell phone, because the wireless service there is likely to be greatly improved.

That’s because Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC), the primary telecom operator in the Bahamas, is expanding its network using Nortel’s wireless technology. The GSM/GPRS network enhancements will triple BTC’s capacity, thus facilitating delivery of next generation services including high-speed wireless broadband, m-commerce, multimedia messaging, and the ability to download large email attachments, videos, music and games. As a result of the improvements, the Bahamas will become an even more desirable destination for vacationers and business travelers. BTC also plans to roll out enhanced roaming capabilities in order to better accommodate international visitors.

“Our aggressive schedule to complete this expansion by the end of September is a direct response to the great investments being made by the Bahamian government in an effort to attract high-end hotels and resorts, as well as housing sub-divisions for affluent vacationers,” said Leon Williams, acting CEO of BTC, in a press release.

Alvio Barrios, regional sales vice president, Nortel (News - Alert) Caribbean and Latin America, said the expanded network “will help put BTC at the forefront of next-generation mobile communications in the Caribbean market, supporting new services for end-users via fixed mobile convergence and IMS technology.”

According to the press release, Nortel’s solution will enable BTC “to achieve operational efficiencies through reduced network complexity and operating expenses as well as the ability to introduce new services quickly.”

“This solution will also provide a foundation for evolution to advanced 3G capabilities to meet market demand, since the network configuration will be a GSM/EDGE, UMTS/HSDPA capable network,” the press release states.

BTC made news in May when it announced that it had selected solutions from Convergin to deliver IMS over its network. Specifically, BTC announced that it is deploying Convergin’s Accolade platform at the core of its network to enable converged services across its wireless (TDMA and GSM), wireline and broadband networks.

The Accolade platform, which will complement the Nortel CS 2000 Softswitch already deployed on the network, will function as a SCIM (service capabilities interaction management) element, allowing the service infrastructure of each network to interoperate, thereby creating a unified service layer to provide fixed-mobile convergence. This will ease BTC’s migration to IMS architecture.

BTC is reportedly gearing up to offer other new services, including an advanced SIP-based prepaid voice service and a phone number service geared for expatriates, targeting the large community of Bahamians in the United States. BTC will be providing its GSM customers with SIP access, thus enabling it to target roaming wireless users or enterprises with Wi-Fi infrastructure. BTC will also consolidate its prepaid services for wireless, wireline and VoIP.

For more information about BTC, visit www.btcbahamas.com.

For more information about Nortel, visit www.nortel.com.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.