Cel*Star restarts shipping equipment
Stabroek News
February 12, 2004
Cel*Star Guyana Inc. says two months after it is interconnected with GT&T, it will be ready to launch superior cellular services in Guyana.
The company secured its licences in February 2001 and a letter writer has questioned why it is taking the firm so long to launch its cellular service; whether the switches, transmission and other facilities are in place; whether its service rates have been submitted to and approved by the Public Utilities Commission; whether it has complied with all other regulatory provisions and whether its network is up and ready for testing?
These questions were put to Wesley Kirton of Cel *Star yesterday. Pierre Strasser, head of Cel*Star's operation, in a written response, says the firm was prepared to ship all necessary equipment for implementation of its network in September/October 2003 when GT&T halted work on the interconnection agreement.
Strasser says plans for shipment of the network equipment have resumed and if GT&T had not halted work, there would not have been a need to halt these shipments. Cel*Star, he says, has invested US$6M since March 2003 installing 20 towers among other things.
Both Kirton and Strasser say once the company is interconnected with GT&T, it will take the firm only two months to get its act together.
"Following actual completion of interconnection work, Cel*Star Guyana will require two months of testing the system before launching our service to ensure that when we do launch, the service will be of the highest quality," Strassers says. He adds that the testing stage is key to superior service and Cel*Star did not believe in mediocrity. He says while the firm is eager to launch, it will not take short cuts to compromise quality.
GT&T halted work to interconnect Cel*Star after it was put on notice by Cel*Star Caribbean, which claims to be the lawful agents of Cel*Star Guyana Inc, of a lawsuit in Florida challenging the present ownership.
This brought into question whether the current directors and managers of Cel*Star Guyana Inc were the legal agents for the firm. GT&T, upon legal advice, decided that it would be guided by a court ruling on the issue and halted work on the interconnection agreement.
Cel*Star Guyana Inc has since moved to the local courts seeking a declaration that the current owners are the lawful owners and Strasser has been lobbying the wider private sector to accept that his firm is getting a raw deal with its US$6M investment in Guyana.
However, GT&T's position remains that it has to be sure that it is dealing with the legal agents of the firm and this is the responsible thing to do. Legal sources said it is not an issue that GT&T signed an agreement with Cel*Star, a corporate entity, and is therefore bound to interconnect. But rather, it is whether the persons it is dealing with are the lawful agents.
GT&T's Chief Executive Officer, Sonita Jagan, says the issue of whether Greg Libertiny, who signed the interconnection agreement, had the authority to so do is now "subsumed" by the legal issues of ownership. GT&T had asked Cel *Star to provide the authority of Libertiny to have signed the interconnection agreement or ratification of this authority.
Strasser told Stabroek Business that Cel*Star forwarded this authority to GT&T and did so on three occasions. He forwarded to this publication a copy of a resolution naming Libertiny a director as the authority.
But while the resolution is subject to query on the basis that it is not the same resolution on the company's file (which was improperly filed in the first place) in the Company Registry, legal sources point out that a resolution appointing a director is not authority to conduct business on behalf of a corporate entity.
Only the board of directors of Cel*Star, sources say, could issue the authority to Libertiny to sign and there is no such authority in the Company Registry.
GT&T has not been given this ratification either.
Legal sources say the issue of Libertiny's authority can be sorted out quickly with a mere ratification by the board that he was authorised to sign but the issue has become secondary as the substantive issue now is whether GT&T is dealing with the rightful agents of Cel*Star.