Dear Editor,
Digicel advertised that GT&T is charging 225 % more on calls to the USA than some other countries. Well I have some more information.
A call to the British Virgin Islands is $287.87 a minute or US$1.44 and this does not include VAT. Vice-versa a call from the British Virgin Islands to Guyana costs only US$0.55! And I don’t have to mention how poor we are in comparison to the BVI.
We are asked to pay $9,980.00 dollars a month for DSL or US$50.00. Our minimum wage is around $25,000.00 a month. How can we ever afford to pay for DSL?
If they would only cut that price in half they would more than quadruple their revenue base since we are paying an exorbitant $6,000.00 on average for very poor dial-up service from other providers. We poor people would rush over to GT&T.
Yours faithfully,
L. Singh
Editor’s note
We sent a copy of this letter to Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company Ltd for their comments and received the following response from Mr Terry Holder, DGM Public Communication:
“Mr Singh seeks to use the experience gained in the British Virgin Islands to compare the rates charged in BVI and Guyana for international calls between the two countries and the rates charged for DSL service.
“The writer does make the point of how poor we in Guyana are in comparison with the BVI, but disregards the fact that Guyanese customers are allowed to receive basic telephone service at a cost considerably lower than his counterpart in the BVI.
“The Guyanese customer pays a monthly rental of US$2.50 cents (G$500) to have the phone available to call or be called, while the rental paid by customers in the BVI is US$20.00 (G$4,000). The charge for basic service in Guyana remains the lowest in this part of the world.
“This has been possible only because the Company has generated revenues from international calls and has ploughed back those revenues to subsidize local calls.
Those revenues have been used to take services into all parts of a country which is many times the size of the BVI.
“As regards the writer’s concerns about the monthly fee for DSL, we must explain that the pricing has to take into consideration the cost of equipment and the cost of providing bandwidth, a portion of which is acquired via satellite with its specific charges.
“In Guyana, because of the relatively low number of persons using DSL, the bandwidth that is shared between users is lower so as to maintain a high quality of service. In larger networks, a higher bandwidth-sharing ratio is possible and this would then lead to better economies of scale. Despite that, the cost of DSL service in Guyana is on par with other service providers in the Caribbean.
“The writer suggests that should GT&T cut the cost of DSL service in half, revenue would more than quadruple. It might be a financially viable suggestion if there were a large volume of consumers and all these consumers were centrally located in and around Georgetown. But the topography of Guyana would require that points of presence be established at locations spread across this large country, which, with the limited number of computers in each location, might make the exercise uneconomical.”
