Mr Cedric Cole attended Trinity College from 1964 to 1971 and was the captain of the College’s football and cricket teams. He holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Concordia University and a Master of Business Administration Degree from McGill University in Canada. He did advanced managerial studies at INSEAD School of Business in France.
His Master’s thesis entitled ‘the Design and Implementation of a Bottom Unit of an Undersea Telemetry System’ was a work commissioned by the Canadian Government’s Department of Oceans and Fisheries and was built to collect and transmit tidal data.
Before going to Canada to study, Cedric was a trained telecommunications technician working at TEXTEL. He continued in the field of telecommunications on his return to Trinidad in 1984 when he joined TELCO and then TSTT where he remained until his early retirement in 2011.
During his career as a Telecommunications Engineer/Manager, he made significant contributions to the development of the landline infrastructure of the Country moving it from a centralized copper cable model to a decentralized one utilizing a mix of copper technologies and fibre optics and extending its reach to the far corners of the Country. He built the first Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) node in the Country in 2009 at 1 Woodbrook place. On this network, customers are guaranteed a minimum bandwidth of 85 GHz for delivery of services.
During the attempted Coup d’état of 1990, he used his knowledge and leadership, qualities ever present throughout his career at TSTT, to prevent a crash of the Country’s telecommunications network. In 1998 he designed and commissioned the build of a network fraud detection system to combat the illegal use of the Company’s facilities and in 2002 he designed and commissioned the build of a service provisioning platform called SGEN that is still in use at the Company to this date. These two home grown systems were built by two start- up companies, IXANOS and SunNet and helped to develop engineering capacity locally.
Cedric rose to the level of Executive Vice President at TSTT and was responsible mostly for Outside Plant Engineering and Customer Service but had a stint as VP Network Services during which time he directed the transition of TSTT’s legacy switching network to an IP based network. His knowledge of switching was an asset sought by the Ministry of National Security while at TSTT and later as a consultant to help develop systems to combat crime.
Cedric is a civic minded person. He managed the BP Renegades Steel Orchestra for 3 years in the mid-80s and pioneered the commercialization of the band’s products and venue. He spends time tutoring young people in Mathematics and also supports Trinity College in various capacities such as managing teams, fund raising and managing improvement projects.
The Trinity College Alumni Association acknowledges Cedric Cole for his contributions in the area of telecommunications and national security and for his continued service to Trinity College and readily admits him into its Hall of Fame.