We can if we get an international licence – Dean
The continuing telecommunications monopoly by the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) continues to limit the growth of DIGICEL in terms of the services that it seeks to place on the local market according to the company’s Chief Executive Officer Gregory Dean.
Dean, the third Chief Executive Officer appointed by DIGICEL to run its local operations and the first Guyanese to hold the position told Stabroek Business that the conclusion of the monopoly talks between GT&T and the government and the acquisition by DIGICEL of an international licence is currently its primary concern.
“It goes without saying that if we secure an international licence there is a lot more that we can do.
The current situation is limiting the service that we can provide to customers and limiting our growth in the market. In a lot of other ways we have surpassed our targets and while I think we are doing well in terms of where we are we would have been further down the road,” Dean said,
According to Dean local DIGICEL customers were seeking the same range of services from the company’s operations in Guyana as those provided by its operations in the rest of the region. “Our customers have been pointing out to us that DIGICEL offers pan-Caribbean roaming and intra-Caribbean calls at reduced rates elsewhere in the Caribbean. Because we do not have an international licence we cannot offer those services and therefore our overall growth has been limited,” Dean said.
DIGICEL has mounted a sustained lobby for an end to the GT&T monopoly on international traffic and Dean told Stabroek Business that an end to the monopoly would result in an immediate enhancement of the quality of the telecommunications service available to Guyana as well as the realization of cheaper rates, “What the competition will mean is that people outside Guyana will be able to call Guyana at a cheaper rate and the overall quality of the call will also be enhanced.”
Several weeks ago Atlantic Tele Network Chairman Cornelius Prior (jr) had told Stabroek Business that an end to the GT&T monopoly could see an increase in local telephone tariffs since GT&T had been utilizing earnings from its international service to subsidize its local land line service. But Dean told Stabroek Business while GT&T would have had to invest in establishing its network an exercise would have to be done to determine whether or not such an increase was justifiable based on whether GT&T may not have already “achieved payback” on that investment which was made several years ago.
“In the early stages of the investment you can make the argument about the need to charge premium rates because we need to recoup our investment. The question is whether a number of years down the line you still need to charge such a premium to recoup that investment,” Dean said.
DIGICEL has declared itself the larger of the two cellular service subscribers in Guyana and Dean told Stabroek Business that that position had been reached through the company’s aggressive approach to marketing. “Because we came into a market where we met an incumbent who had customers for quite a while we had to shout about our network in order to win customers.
Additionally, once we are able to bring those customers over we have had to back up the promises that we have made with the quality of what we deliver,” Dean said.