Friday, February 2, 2007

ROAD TOWN, BVI: The only mobile provider in the British Virgin Islands, CCT Global Communications, says the company is one hundred percent in favour of the liberalisation of the telecommunications sub-sector in the BVI.

One of the directors of the company, Meade Malone, says they believe that done correctly, done fairly, done within the context of the Territory’s national interest, liberalisation will greatly benefit the economic and social development of the Territory and its people.

His comments come at a time when the BVI is moving to liberialise the telecommunications sector in the territory.

But Malone however says that as the territory moves in this direction there are some issues that are troubling CCT. He was referring to issues regarding Cable and Wireless.

He said Cable and Wireless BVI Limited has sought and was given the privilege to rebalance their tariff well before liberalisation took place, when it was CCT’s clear understanding that rate rebalancing would take place as part of the liberalisation process.

Malone says during the deregulation negotiations, it was acknowledged that this was a major benefit given to C&W as it afforded C&W the advantage of avoiding the negative responses to rate rebalancing from the community during the early stages of liberalisation process.

‘This issue has been compounded by the fact that Cable and Wireless continues to refuse to recognise CCT as a commercial carrier and charges CCT the same rates as an individual customers, thereby resulting in CCT losing money on every call its customers make to a C&W phones,’Malone said.

According to Malone, ‘to add insult to injury, C&W in March and April of 2006 presented CCT with bills totaling well over a million dollars, which were more than 14 months old, relating to roaming charges and demanded payments within its normal billing terms.

He said after a period of discussions and a proposal that CCT pay C&W $300,000 per month to pay off its old 14-month old bills, C&W in the middle of those discussions and indeed while they were still paying, filed documents in the High Court to put CCT into bankruptcy, and used this threat to pressure CCT into relinquishing some of its spectrum rights under its licence.

Malone said to remove the threats of further reduction in public confidence in CCT, the company paid the demands of Cable and Wireless in one lump sum.

Malone further said having failed to get access to the spectrum allocated to CCT by way of threats of bankruptcy, Cable and Wireless was some how able to get permission to begin testing its wireless network over the same system used and operated by CCT. As a result of this testing C&W caused major disruption to thousands of CCT’s customers at a loss to CCT both financially and more importantly to its reputation and the quality of CCT’s network has deteriorated since this time.

Cable and Wireless and CCT are the only two telecoms providers seeking licences from government as the process of liberialisation continues. There is also an application from Digicel, which is being examined by government.

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