Dear Editor,
I am shocked to learn that GT&T is moving to degrade internet access or signals through the VOIP communication online-channels. This is an anti-development move that will drive users to more expensive cost-per-minute communication services at home and abroad.
The original monopoly telecommunications agreements and those that led to further monopolization of the industry in Guyana should be revisited and de-monopolized. There is a pattern in the monopolizing of GT&T that restrains competition and the industry’s development through protecting the company’s monopoly rights beyond the original agreement.
All users would experience a lot less with downgraded VOIP signals and perhaps a higher alternative service cost. I remembered the 1996 cost per minute to Guyana from the US at $2.34 per minute under the old arrangements. I was shocked then by the high costs and the use of the Guyana-based servers delivering phone sex calls to overseas users. That monopoly revenue was theirs to keep offshore. I was shocked when monopoly rights were given for wireless communications at a shareholder’s meeting in June 1996, and now I am equally shocked that the VOIP channel is being degraded by a company policy or by a permissive government policy designed to push users into their revenue funnel
.
The GT&T monopoly should not interfere or extend to low-cost wireless and internet forms of communications that are in the public domain − air wave rights and rights above ground. The laws of the state should protect users from deliberate or indirect downgrading of any signal that would stimulate communication, business, education and development. GT&T should be partners in development, realizing that it was capitalized with a shoestring budget offshore by two off-shore entrepreneurs 17 years ago. This transaction occurred with the Connecticut-headquartered parent company, even as there were substantial liquid asset accounts inside GT&T in 1991.
Government should re-regulate wireless and internet technology companies by freeing access and protecting the tools that entrepreneurs and economic developers use.
Yours faithfully,
Ganga Prasad Ramdas
Former Database Manager, AT&T
