If phone company wants resumed talks it should let us know
By Gitanjali Singh
Stabroek News
August 13, 2002
Prime Minister Sam Hinds says if the phone company wants to resume negotiations where they were left off in Trinidad, it would be helpful for it to communicate this in writing either to himself or President Bharrat Jagdeo.
A source close to the company recently said the firm believes that it would be best if negotiations were resumed from where they were left off in Trinidad rather than await the outcome of the case in the US which was initiated by Atlantic Tele Network (ATN), parent company of the Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company Limited (GT&T). ATN is seeking to block a US$18M loan from the Inter-American Development Bank for an information and communications technology project for Guyana which will modernise the way government services are accessed and allow for internet use across the country.
The attempted block came on the heels of the government and the company negotiating a break in its monopoly and the immediate release of data transmission from the monopoly.
Hinds said that by going to court in the US, ATN pre-empted the process and he said he is not sure how much of the statements recently attributed to GT&T sources that President Jagdeo scuttled the positions adopted by the government negotiating team is a good representation of what took place. He said significant policy positions for the country have to go to Cabinet and the President for approval.
What a GT&T source has claimed is that while that company's negotiating team was reporting directly to its chairman Cornelius Prior, the government team was reporting to Hinds. However, the source said that when the draft agreements reached were taken to the President, he was unhappy with the positions adopted and refused to sanction them. Hence the delay in the signing of the memorandum of understanding on agreements reached between the two sides and ATN losing faith in the process.
Stabroek News was told that among the concessions made by the government team during the talks were to recognise the monopoly of the firm; to allow it a monopoly on internet services; to give it complete control over wireless data communication; to allow for an increase in local rates to the tune of $20 per call to compensate for losses on international traffic and for the advisory fees to be reduced from six per cent to three per cent over a three to six year period. Sources indicated that the President was uncomfortable with these concessions.
As to the government's position on the court case, Hinds said that the matter is still being reviewed by the government's legal advisers including Foley and Hoag in the US.
US Judge Thomas Jackson has given ATN 60 days to enjoin the government as a defendant in its application to block the loan project for Guyana on grounds that it impinges on its monopoly rights and amounted to expropriation of its property.