Residents on the islands of Grand Turk, Salt Cay, Providenciales , North Caicos, Middle Caicos, South Caicos and East Caicos experienced an immediate and dramatic improvement in the quality of communications from government facilities after installation of a digital microwave backbone designed and manufactured by Cable AML. The system architecture consists of a number of links in series as opposed to a “star” or Point-To-Multi Point approach in which all delivery originates from a single, common point. The three principal links in series are between 40km and 50km each, with a total route distance in excess of 130km, mostly over water. The combination of 5 links in series and spectrum constraints made it necessary to use digital MPEG2 encoding of the video channels and QAM modulation of the ASI carriers.

Fourteen receiving points downconvert the backbone signal to the conventional 54 to 870 MHz spectrum and feed rack-mounted Demodulators. The Demodulators feed signal to existing CATV systems that had never previously been interconnected.

A Cable AML MMDS transmitter in Salt Cay delivers analog signals from Grand Turk directly to subscribers.

The system will expand to three videos with their stereo audios in the next phase. The backbone can accommodate more than 200 video programs.