Within the first week of its release there were 180 downloads of the new Barbados Free Wi-Fi App – 84 per cent of which were on devices registered outside of Barbados.
And Lybron Sobers, developer of the app, suggested its success overseas could be due to tourists seeking to find out about the availability of free Wi-Fi before coming to the island.
“I think it is one of those things where, definitely overseas, people expect you [to] have an app to solve a problem,” he said.
“And when people come here they want to buy a phone to do everything they need to do, and they will be looking for Internet connectivity when they move around Barbados.
So the implications for this are that this is not only beneficial to Barbadians, it is beneficial on a worldwide level,” added Sobers.
His comments came as he officially launched the Barbados Free Wi-Fi App at the LEX Caribbean office in Worthing last Thursday.
The new app, which is free, forms a part of the Barbados Entrepreneurship Foundation’s Free Wi-Fi Barbados? Wi-Not? Project.
The app, which was released two weeks ago, is designed to, among other things, provide reference for free Wi-Fi hotspots on the island and allow users to share the location of those Wi-Fi hotspots.
Saying that he was not able to tell if the downloads outside the island were by tourists or Barbadians living abroad, Sobers said most of them were done in the United States. Others, he said, were in Britain, Saudi Arabia, China and Japan.
“I mean, just all over the world people have been trying it out already,” said Sobers, adding that he was satisfied with the number of downloads for the first week of it being released without any marketing.
Sobers expected the trend to continue “for a while” until people in Barbados became more aware of it.
The new app only works on Apple devices currently but Sobers said he was willing to help someone develop the app that could be used on the Android, Windows and RIM platforms. (MM)
