With the continued delay of legislation needed to liberalise the telecommunications sector, Global Technology proprietor George Melville believes that citizens are being denied “true connectivity” at a lower cost that would come from competition and additional investments in the sector.
“First of all I really don’t understand the delay. We believe that should the sector be blown open, you will see some really interesting technologies coming in,” Melville told Stabroek News in an interview on Thursday. He said too that in addition to 2G, 3G and 4G and LTE technology, there are a lot of other technologies that can come into Guyana and Guyanese will benefit.
“You can talk to any number of companies right now. Companies are paying $200,000 for a VPN [Virtual Private Network] connection from one location to another. That is ridiculous,” he said. “We are a poor country. Where are you going to get the money [for this] if you have locations all over the country?” he asked.
The liberalisation of the sector is contingent upon the passage of the Telecommunications Bill 2012, which is with a special select committee of the National Assembly.
The debate on the bill and its passage have been put off to facilitate ongoing talks between government and the two major telecommunications companies in Guyana–Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company and Digicel—but there have been signals that the legislation could be enacted by August.
Melville said to get adequate connectivity, there must be an open playing field, which is currently not enabled through the GT&T monopoly. “Coming back to my real pet peeve, in terms of connectivity: 15 years ago I stood up to GT&T at a meeting and said that their bandwidth is too expensive. Nothing has changed since then,” he said.
“We get one megabyte for about $30,000. But a megabyte is not dedicated, it is shared,” he said. “So at any one time you don’t get a megabyte. What am I going to do with a ‘meg’ for a location like this? I would probably need 50 to 100 ‘megs’ if I am going to have people from Cambridge or York or NYU speaking to students in a teleconference,” he asked. He spoke of the need to have downloads that could handle live feeds and uploads that could handle student responses.
Melville said that where the country is in terms of technology infrastructure leaves much to be desired.
“I am hopeful that when the broadcasting board sits down and the telecommunication group sits down, they will take into consideration the fact that should we open the industry it would be better for the consumers, costs will come down and more players will be enticed to come into the field,” he said.
“I am excited by companies coming in and trying different things. What I would like to see is government being a little more open, and they have started this, by the way. I think that the monopoly has done more harm to Guyana than could be possibly imagined. Kids are growing up around the world with access to lots of bandwidth. They are seeing stuff a long time before our kids get that information,” he said. “You know even with One Laptop per Family those laptops are not connected to anything. Okay, you might be able to do Word and Excel but really the value is in connectivity where you need to be able to go online and access the vast amount of resources that are there,” he said.
Services
Melville spoke of Global’s acquisition of I-Net Communications and its plans for a roll-out of services provided that the authorities give approval.
“We started the acquisition of I-Net in September of last year and finished in January. But what we bought was the current infrastructure that they had and their licence,” he said. Melville explained that the I-Net licence was issued at a time when broadcast and telecommunications were both looked at as one concept. “The government has made some progress in terms of trying to define what should be in the broadcast legislation and what should be in the telecommunications legislation. We were lucky that they went ahead and pass the broadcast legislation. We believe it is time that they pass the telecommunications legislation. We feel very strongly about that,” he said. “There was a lot of work and I-Net did a lot of work on drafting the new Bill, along with Digicel and GT&T. Everybody had a say… but there are a lot of things in there to really benefit Guyanese,” he said.
“What we are trying to do with I-Net right now is break out the services. Remember, this licence was issued a long time before many of the current technologies evolved,” he said. “We are working with both the Broadcasting Authority and the NFMU [National Frequency Management Unit] to ensure that we are in complete sync with new definitions of our licence,” he said.
“With I-Net, we are pushing to build our infrastructure. As we speak with the [NFMU] and as they clear the networks that we want to put up, we will go ahead and put them up,” he said. Noting that the NFMU has a say in what I-Net will be allowed to do, Melville said that the last thing that the company wants is to put in significant investment, put up a network, start offering a service and get an injunction from GT&T to shut it down. “I think that approach by GT&T – to shut down a company that is trying to offer a legitimate service by injunction, I don’t think Guyanese really understands just how much it affects us all,” he said.
Melville said that I-Net’s licence is one that grants telecommunication for data services. He explained that a telecommunications company could be defined as voice and data, voice-only and data-only. He said that I-Net was given a licence for data alone, unlike Digicel, which is voice and GT&T, which is voice and data.
He said that I-Net had got a telecommunications licence for data about 13 years ago. “That is when they built IFMAS [Integrated Financial Management and Accounting System] and they were supplying bandwidth to [corporate] citizens, like Citizens Bank, Banks DIH Limited, [and the] US Embassy. I-Net imported their own bandwidth and sent it out to these different clients,” he said. “GT&T has the monopoly on bandwidth. What GT&T basically did was go after I-Net with predatory pricing and took all their customers, leaving just IFMAS,” he said. “So when we got to I-Net last year September, they went from a $100 million company in revenue providing services, to nothing substantial. With GT&T’s control of the industry they basically ran [I-Net] into the ground,” he said.
Melville says competition in the sector would result in the expansion of services at an affordable cost. “I am very much in that frame of mind because more competition is going to mean that the cost of connectivity is going to come down. More services are going to be enabled and then is when I believe Guyanese will get true connectivity,” he said.
“We have been talking about e-commerce for 20 years now and it is not working. For me, it all comes back to connectivity,” he said. He added that it is sad to see Lethem without the infrastructure to handle real border business between Guyana and Brazil. “I believe that our future is linked south and not north and to see the [lack of connectivity] is still kind of upsetting,” he said.
“I believe that the Telecommunications Bill would really push Guyana forward, not only in the sharing of towers but encouraging people to make better investments and provide bandwidth,” he said.
He said that while persons are voicing their opinion on the manner in which licences were distributed by the government, the bigger issue for him is that there must be more investment in the sector and for that to happen there must be a liberalised sector.
“So how do we encourage companies, both local and foreign, to take the chance [and invest]. If you are going to spend between US$3 million and US$5 million—the cost of putting up a proper infrastructure—you have to have an investment environment that is going to allow the investors to feel comfortable in doing that,” he said.
“Whether in the US, Canada, the Caribbean or right here, it is not about pulling a guy back when he is using his own money, it is about supporting him or giving him the necessary regulatory requirements and guiding him,” he said.
