The History of Cable & Wireless in St. Lucia

In the period up to 1966, the Company operated the international communications to St. Lucia, with the Government providing local telephony. During that period, the external communications continued to be enhanced, with ship to shore radio added in 1924, High frequency (H.F.) radio in 1928, an inter-island tropospheric radio system in 1965. St. Lucia was also the home base of a series of cableships used to maintain the submarine cables in the region and beyond. A submarine cable storage depot was located at what is now the vendors' arcade on Jeremie Street. The principle means of international telecommunications was the Telegram, which had progressed from being sent in Morse code, to being typed on a "teleprinter". To make an international call required a visit to the Company's office on Bridge Street, giving the caller's name and phone number to the attendant, and waiting to be invited to a public booth when the call was eventually established, perhaps hours later.

In 1966, the Government signed a 20-year agreement with C&W to provide for the installation and maintenance of an islandwide automated telephone system. The first automatic exchange was opened in December 1966 in what is now the ground floor of the Ministry of Education building, with a capacity of 800 lines. During the next few years, the towns and villages were progressively connected to the automatic network, until a total of eleven exchanges, ranging in capacity from 20 lines in places like Canaries, to Castries. By contrast, the smallest exchange is now 256 lines in Desbarra, and the largest in Castries is 9000, making a grand total of 33000 lines network wide.

During the ensuring years, the emphasis was on expanding capacity fast enough to cater for rapidly growing demand. There is a phenomenon called suppressed demand, which means that once demand is being seen to be satisfied, those who hitherto hadn't bothered now applied for service, requiring a certain flexibility to be built into projected connections. On the other hand, such developments as were occurring in the industry could not be ignored, which saw direct international dialing by the operator introduced in 1971. The result of this development was to drastically reduce the waiting time for completion of international calls. In 1977, what was then the longest island hopping analogue microwave system in the world was commissioned, spanning the 800 miles between Tortilla and Trinidad, including the French islands.