Dear Editor,
I write to you with respect to an article written by your columnist Patrick Van Beek in the Business Page of your Friday, February, 18, 2007 edition of the Stabroek News. In this article captioned “Blue power and Firestorm: the Battle for the Local Cell Phone Market begins in earnest” your columnist stated as follows:
“GT&T is the incumbent telecommunications provider in Guyana. Owned 80% by ATN and 20% by the Govern-ment of Guyana the terms of the privatization gave GT&T exclusive rights to voice and data under a 20 year agreement. Despite this GT&T made a concession to allow competition in the cellular market”.
Please be advised that licence No 27 of 1990 grants to GT&T an exclusive licence for a period of 20 years and at the option of the licensee and subject to the provisions of the Agreement, shall be renewable on an exclusive basis for a further period of 20 years,.
Clause 3 (c) of the licence, however, states that as far as it relates to cellular radio telephone service, it shall be a non-exclusive licence. Hence, a non-exclusive licence was granted in 2001 to Cel*Star (Guyana) Inc. the forerunner of Digicel for a period of 15 years to operate a cellular service. It follows therefore, that GT&T has not made any ‘concessions’ to allow for competition to the cellular market.
I trust that you will publish this response to correct this error.
Yours faithfully,
Vidiahar I Persaud
Secretary
Public Utilities
Commission
