Dear Editor,
I noticed a full-page ad at the front of the April 2 Stabroek News announcing glorious improvements in the GT&T internet service.
How wonderful, if you live in the areas that GT&T takes pity on. Here in the neglected county of Essequibo, we can’t even get GT&T to give us a proper basic phone service. Sometimes, when you call a landline number, it’s like the magicians at GT&T ‘disappeared’ that person off the face of the Earth and you hear a message saying, “We’re sorry. The number you have dialled is not in our directory.” Never mind you spoke to the person yesterday on that number. Never mind that the number will suddenly start to work next week. For now, that number doesn’t exist.
Many years ago, the then-CEO of GT&T came to Essequibo and apologized personally to us on TV for the poor landline service. He seemed sincere, but he was probably just a good actor because we never saw any improvement. In fact, our dry-weather phones only became more temperamental. My own business was forced to stop using bank cards because customers would try to pay their bills and find that the landline needed to connect to their bank account was down. Cash only in Essequibo.
However, GT&T still charges us for a full month of Internet even when we lose days/weeks at a time to their own non-functional phone lines. And even when the phone lines are somehow able to carry a signal over their fragile backs, we enjoy such rapid speeds as 0.25 Mbps on a good day. Most days it’s half that. (Not to mention the constant disconnections). I’m told that in Georgetown, they get speeds of about 1 Mbps for the same price we pay. We Essequibians can only dream of one day getting access to the outside world at such heavenly speeds. As for this 10 Mbps the new GT&T internet promises, don’t give us that, because I might die from shock if I ever cruised the internet that fast.
Finally, you would think that since the problem is landlines that we would at least get good internet on our cellphones. Nope! Mobile internet is 10 times slower here than in Georgetown on the same phone.
Look, GT&T, I know Essequibo isn’t a big, profitable market so that makes us lesser in your eyes, not worthy of investment in development or maintenance, but you’re not an ordinary private company. The G in your name stands for Guyana, not Georgetown. You’re a public utility, so your profiteering needs to be less a priority and you should at least be giving us the working basics.
Here’s our simple challenge to you: By Christmas this year, get our landlines working all the time. Don’t tell us about how many cellphone towers you’ve put up. Don’t tell us about how much money you’ve spent in Essequibo. That means nothing until you fulfil your basic obligations to us – a phone that works when we pick it up.
Oh yes, also, since we get about 1/4 the internet speed of Georgetown, how about you charge us 1/4 the internet fee of Georgetown?
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address provided)