The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) made the ruling to help boost the final price government hopes to receive if it goes through with the privatisation of the telecommunications company, formerly BaTelCo.<\/P><\/p>\n
Sounds fairly innocent. Why should BHC have to sell any of its circuits to a competitor?
<\/p>\n
However, this announcement is not as innocent as its appears. This decision is going to have far-reaching consequences for the Bahamas\uffb4 reputation as a country in which to do business. The Bahamas has already lost the confidence of the international telecommunications fraternity, many bankers, and business persons in general. Who can safely venture into a business enterprise in the future if government, with a flick of the pen, can change all the grounds rules on which the business and its earning expectations were based?<\/P><\/p>\n
\uff93The PUC,\uff94 said the announcement, \uff93is satisfied that the effect of this (that is selling its fixed line connections to a rival) would erode BTC\uffb4s international revenue to an unacceptable extent and would harm BTC\uffb4s ability to fund the provision of local service and meet its universal service obligations.\uff94<\/P><\/p>\n
Isn\uffb4t it strange to be thinking of this at this late date when government has already undermined BTC\uffb4s \uff93international revenue to an unacceptable extent\uff94 with its announcement \uff97 through Minister Bradley Roberts \uff97 that it would spend $60 million on a Family Island undersea cable, and another $28 million on a cellular upgrade during a privatisation exercise.<\/P><\/p>\n
The announcement was made despite government being warned of the consequences of its actions by one of the three consortiums bidding to be the strategic partner. It was made clear to the Ministry of Finance \uff97 the Prime Minister\uffb4s ministry \uff97 that the proposed projects, as later announced by Mr Roberts, could have \uff93a significant adverse impact on the cash flow and leverage levels of BTC.\uff94 It was made very clear that the consequence of this decision would adversely affect what it would be able to pay for BTC\uffb4s equity. And so it has.<\/P><\/p>\n
It was also made clear that all these costly plans could be done far more cheaply after privatisation. So much cheaper, in fact, that we urge the Opposition to investigate this claim and, if found to be true, demand that government give the public an accounting for the excessive expenditure.<\/P><\/p>\n
What the PUC\uffb4s announcement has done is effectively made it almost impossible for DigiTel, subsidiary of Systems Resource Group (SRG), to go ahead with its plans to offer the public fixed-line services from January 1, 2004 as planned.<\/P><\/p>\n
We draw two conclusions from this. It is our opinion that the PUC is no longer an independent body, but subject to government interference. <\/P><\/p>\n
We have come to this conclusion because of the history of this licence.<\/P><\/p>\n
Privatisation of BaTelCo, the telecommunications monopoly, was supposed to have been completed in 2000. It gave a privatised BaTelCo, no longer a corporation, but now the Bahamas Telecommunications Company, two years of unfettered space to build without competition. The exclusivity period ended on March 31, 2002 and December 31, 2003 for cellular and fixed-line services respectively. <\/P><\/p>\n
In September 2001 the PUC moved to liberalise telecoms in the Bahamas by inviting applications for the licence that was awarded to SRG in February, 2002.<\/P><\/p>\n
The government\uffb4s telecommunications policy was then amended in May 2002, cancelling all moratorium dates until further notice, because BTC had not met its privatisation deadline.<\/P><\/p>\n
Was SRG\uffb4s licence now null and void? The PUC ruled that it was not. It held that SRG had gained its licence rights in February 2002 and that a change to telecoms sector policy should not affect these rights. It further stated that if a court challenge by a rival bidder to the awarding of SRG\uffb4s licence had not interrupted the process, SRG\uffb4s licence could have been executed before May 1, 2002.<\/P><\/p>\n
In effect what the PUC is now saying is that having granted SRG \uff93licence rights\uff94, which when that licence was given out could only be utilised through BTC\uffb4s leased circuits, those rights can now be rendered useless by the withdrawal of the circuits. Remember BTC is a monopoly, which under its own licence is obligated to provide these circuits to whomever the PUC licenses. And the PUC licensed SRG.<\/P><\/p>\n
The position now is that SRG (DigiTel) has a licence that has been made virtually ineffective. <\/P><\/p>\n
In June the PUC\uffb4s view was that SRG had \uff93licence rights\uff94 that could not be altered by a change of policy. A short three months later it has pulled the plug, changed the rules and left SRG dead in the water.<\/P><\/p>\n
We would need a lot of proof to be convinced that this was a PUC decision.<\/P><\/p>\n
\uff95 (Tomorrow we shall discuss our second conclusion on this matter). <\/I><\/P><\/p>\n
Editorial, The Tribune<\/B>
\nSeptember 3rd, 2003<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On September 1 it was announced that BTC will no longer have to provide leased circuits to any rival operator for fixed-line telephony connection for the duration of its fixed-line exclusivity period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}