The Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company (GT&T) has again raised the issue of the damage being done to its telecommunications infrastructure through acts of vandalism that target mostly its insulated copper cable. The cutting and removal of the copper cable is known to be the work of thieves who are aware that copper fetches a handsome price on the scrap metal market. On the other hand the practice persists at a cost to both GT&T and to the company’s domestic and commercial consumers including call centres and other business places whose operations rely heavily – in some cases, entirely – on an efficient telecommunications system; so that when the cuts occur GT&T is under pressure to restore the service as a matter of urgency.
Over time the company has released figures regarding the cost of restoring the disrupted installations and the most recent figure disclosed by Chief Executive Officer Yog Mahadeo is US$3.5 million for repairs during the period January to June this year. These are staggering figures and Mr Mahadeo has provided an explanation as to just why the repairs are so costly in a separate story published in this issue of the Stabroek Business. He also made the point that consumers too, particularly business houses, suffer considerable loss of revenue during periods when their services are disrupted.
The police, GT&T says, have been cooperating with the company in an effort to bring the cable theft under control though, given the extensive cable build out, effective policing is impossible. GT&T itself has been incurring the additional cost of deploying its own security detail to assist in the policing function.
GT&T has also pointed to what appears to be a more sinister and equally costly and damaging dimension to the attacks on its installations. The vandals, the company’s CEO told this newspaper last week, are, in many cases, turning their attention to the company’s fibre optic cable installations. Fibre optic cable has become, in some instances, a replacement for copper cable given its advantage of being able to carry a larger amount of bandwidth over a greater distance more quickly. Unlike copper cable which uses electronic pulses as its signal medium, fiber optic cable uses light pulses in various applications including telephone systems, cable television, medical and engineering technology and various other fields. The advantages of its use in Guyana’s growing ICT sector are readily apparent.
But fibre optic cable contains no copper and given the acquired expertise of local copper thieves they are only too well aware of this. This, of course, raises the question as to why GT&T’s fibre optic installations are being vandalized. During his interview with this newspaper Mr Mahadeo appeared decidedly reluctant to employ the word ‘sabotage’ in discussing the issue, though a recent example of destruction of fibre optic cable which he gave, leads to the inescapable conclusion that fibre optic cable is being targeted seemingly solely for the purpose of disrupting the telecommunications service. The case in point was one in which the vandals, having cut one end of the cable and having obviously discerned that there was no copper to be had, proceeded, nonetheless, to go to the trouble making a second cut, removing the entire section of the cable and carting it off.
This is not the first time that GT&T has drawn public attention to the damage to its fibre optic cable installation nor is it the first time that it has made the point that unlike in the case of copper cable theft, there is no monetary value to be derived from removing fibre optic cable. And even if GT&T itself is yet to make the point perhaps as forcibly as it should the mind boggles as to why, as appears to be the case, people would wish to cause deliberate disruption to the country’s telecommunications system given its strategic, commercial and domestic importance and given the high cost associated with repairing the damage. Here, the issue goes way beyond the costs to GT&T and to users of the telecommunications system and extends into the realm of the cost of such damage to the economy as a whole and even into the realm of national security. It is not a matter that the authorities should take lightly.
