The dominant telecommunications service provider in the country is making the case once again for the Bahamas Telecommunications Company [BTC] to have the exclusive right to offer the voice over the Internet service and has petitioned regulators to strongly consider the recommendation in its current round of consultation.
BTCﾒs Vice President in charge of legal, regulatory and interconnection matters Felicity Johnson addressed the matter in a documented response that she submitted to certain guidelines that the Public Utilities Commission is proposing.
“BTC asserts that commercial use of voice over the Internet can be provided by BTC only and that other licensed operators cannot use VoIP technology to offer commercial voice over the Internet services [e.g. Skype],” she wrote.
“BTC asserts, however, that licensed operators may use VoIP technology to offer other telecommunications services. This position is consistent with BTCﾒs position regarding this matter.”
The company this week launched its Voice Internet Bahamas Electronic (VIBE) – similar to Vonage and Skype – which allows customers to use a standard telephone and broadband Internet connection to make and receive international phone calls at a relatively low rate.
VIBE transmits calls securely over the Internet through the use of a telephone Internet adapter and is plugged into a broadband Internet connection. The service was designed to allow customers to talk as long as they want at a fixed rate, which is considerably cheaper than the rate charged over residential phone lines.
While appearing as a guest on the Love 97 talk show Issues of the Day yesterday, BTCﾒs Acting President Leon Williams called VoIP a “disruptive technology.”
He referred to the erosion of revenue that the company has experienced over the years. Back in 2002, he said, BTCﾒs revenue for long distance calls was $90 million, but it currently only earns less than half of that because of the Internet.
“Every time you introduce a new technology, it cannibalizes an existing technology, so I am cannibalizing today the TDMA revenue by introducing GSM and in addition to that we dropped the rates for long distance [over the years] by over 70%,” he said.
“Going forward we recognize that we have to find new revenue streams. VoIP is considered a disruptive technologyﾅ[because] any technology that revolutionises the incumbentﾒs way of doing business is called disruptive.”
In the document that BTC submitted to regulators recently the company sought to make a clear distinction in her submissions between the appropriate definition of Voice Over Internet Protocol [VoIP] technology and the services that are derived from it. VoIP technology can actually be used to complete calls that are not purely made over the Internet.
Ms. Johnson acknowledged that the technology that enables the service is typically offered to business customers as it is economically inefficient to offer high speed access to residential users.
“Therefore although it is correct to distinguish between voice over Internet Protocol [IP] and voice over the Internet, it is therefore equally correct and important to distinguish between the technology and the service,” she noted.
“The service is being offered illegally but licensed operators in The Bahamas although the technology is being used legally.”
Up to 70 percent of outgoing international bypasses BTCﾒs network with 30 to 40 percent of business subscribers using VoIP alternatives, according to an Inter American Development Bank report on Promoting Investment in Information and Communication Technologies in the Caribbean.
It added that incentives to bypass BTCﾒs public network are so overwhelming that individuals and small enterprises are not intimidated by the threat of huge fines for defying the law.
Under the Telecommunications Act, any person who uses VoIP or provides the service without approval form the Public Utilities Commission risks a $300,000 fine.
Mr. Williams suggested that local residents who are using the current VoIP services through foreign carriers are complicit in economic erosion.
“You have got a Vonage [that] allows a Bahamian to pay $24.99 on his credit card, no money stays in The Bahamas for it, nobody is employed in The Bahamas as a result of it,” he said.
“It canﾒt work unless it is using an ISP network, so BTC is paying $200,000 a month to get that piped between The Bahamas and MCI and Sprint and Vonage is not contributing to it, when something goes wrong with the telephone line Vonage doesnﾒt pay.”
The IDB report that was released earlier this year urged the government to take stock of the current situation; understand the realities of this technology and its impact on prices; recognize the futility of trying to stop its progress or to police its use and instead encourage BTC to embrace the technology to reduce the overall cost of delivering telecommunications services in The Bahamas.
By: Tameka Lundy, The Bahama Journal
