{"id":27089,"date":"2012-10-18T00:20:39","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T04:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/?p=27089"},"modified":"2012-10-18T00:33:03","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T04:33:03","slug":"outrage-continues-at-cable-increase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2012\/10\/outrage-continues-at-cable-increase","title":{"rendered":"Outrage Continues As Cable Increases"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Nearly 50 people at a town hall meeting expressed outrage last night at the proposed 27 percent rate increase in the super basic cable package offered by Cable Bahamas Limited (CBL).<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day we should not even be entertaining this because we are all still having a tough time financially,\u201d Kandice Smith said at the meeting at Town Centre Mall organized by the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA).<\/p>\n

CBL is seeking permission from URCA for the increase. URCA is holding public consultations on the request. Cable customers have expressed outrage at other town hall meetings.<\/p>\n

Stephen Bereaux, URCA\u2019s director of policy and regulation, and Kathleen Riviere-Smith, URCA CEO, braved the firestorm of criticism from those in attendance.<\/p>\n

\u201cCable Bahamas, let me describe it one way.\u201d Maria Brown said. \u201cIf you go to Bamboo Shack and you buy a chicken snack and the person throws the change at you, not that you didn\u2019t get the change, but they threw it, that\u2019s what they are like.”<\/p>\n

\u201cLike they say, manners and respect carry you a long way. I don\u2019t think Cable cares because they are too rich.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jerome Johnson asked if there was a lawyer present at the meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ask because if I could get some petitions I would like to know how much signatures we need to stop this raise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we are not going to let Cable Bahamas get no raise right now. They came in this country, they signed [a] contract with our government to \u2018cablize\u2019 the 700 islands and cays. How much money do they want? Why are they so greedy?\u201d<\/p>\n

CBL officials have said that the increase is necessary, as the cost of operations in the country has increased.<\/p>\n

When contacted last night, David Burrows, head of marketing at Cable Bahamas, said the company understands what Bahamians are experiencing, as the cost of living has more than doubled since Cable Bahamas came to The Bahamas. Cable Bahamas has not had a basic rate increase ever, despite applying on three separate occasions, Burrows noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been rejected three times for a rate increase,\u201d Burrows said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrimarily the rejections were because there was no framework in place in order to get a price increase. No one had ever done the homework or guidelines for a regulated service to get a price increase for television.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2005 BTC got an 85 percent increase on their business line and a 57 percent increase on their phone line. They had not gotten a rate increase in three decades. It\u2019s going on two decades for us that we\u2019ve not had a rate increase.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burrows added that URCA said that based on their application \u201cwhat we are asking for is reasonable\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwenty seven percent is actually less than what was justified based on the analysis set up by URCA,\u201d\u00a0 Burrows said.<\/p>\n

\u201cURCA\u2019s formula said we could have asked for $11.31 but we asked for $8 because of the economic times.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were numerous people who came to the microphone to lodge various complaints about the rate increase and CBL\u2019s service.<\/p>\n

Political activist and former Democratic National Alliance (DNA) candidate Rodney Moncur was blunt at the meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cURCA should reject Cable Bahamas\u2019 application,\u201d he declared.<\/p>\n

\u201cI work part time for a distinguished law firm. Yesterday I was at the office and cable, Internet services and the cable signal went off. It went off. They provide poor service.”<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of us here are convinced that URCA has made up its mind. I say to satisfy us you have to reject this. Don\u2019t give them eight cents. Don\u2019t give them e-i-g-h-t cents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moncur\u2019s comments and presence fuelled the mood against CBL at the meeting.<\/p>\n

Bereaux said people have until this Friday, October 19 to mail or email URCA regarding their feelings over the proposed rate increase.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have gotten a huge volume of comments and our process requires us to be transparent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we have to correlate those, we have to answer them. We can\u2019t just hear them and walk away. So there is a lot of work that URCA has to do between now and whenever we finish.”<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we hope that by early January we would be able to have some form of decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Article By Travis Cartwright-Carroll <\/span><\/em>
\nGuardian Staff Reporter<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cable Bahamas says it is “necessary” to raise prices in order to continue delivering a level of service that many say includes too many outages, rude customer service and unethical business practices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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":[3],"tags":[216,488],"class_list":["post-27089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-cable-bahamas","tag-urca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27089","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}