New PUC rates: Cellular subscribers can anticipate more GT&T "packages" …George
Caribbean-wide roaming already available to subscribers, Cell Tower for Providence stadium
Stabroek News
January 26, 2007
The Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) says it welcomes the recent fixing of floor and ceiling rates for cellular services by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) since the new range of rates provides the company with more flexibility to provide cost-saving options to its customers.
"In the past it sometimes took as many as three to four months to secure clearance from the PUC for rate adjustments in order to allow the company to make special offers to its customers. The new floor and ceiling rates represent a more settled arrangement which, in effect, means that we will not need to apply to the PUC on each occasion that we want to pass on cost-saving measures to our customers," GT&T Sales and Marketing Director Michael George told Stabroek Business last week. George also said that he expected that the new rate range announced by the PUC will bring an end to consumer association criticisms "every time an application is made for lower rates."
While industry sources are already anticipating a "price war" between GT&T and rival cellular service provider Digicel when the new PUC rates come into force from February 16th, George told Stabroek Business that while the company will seek to use the flexibility offered by the new rates to provide more "offers" to its customers it would not seek to engage in a "price war" with the rival company. "We believe that in the final analysis price wars are counterproducitve," George told Stabroek Business.
Several weeks ago George had told Stabroek Business that consumers could anticipate an aggressive marketing campaign by GT&T to retain and expand its share of the local cellular service market in the wake of Digicel's emergence late last year as its main competitor. Last week he confirmed that the company had significantly increased its marketing budget and that its "special offer" to users of its TDMA service to switch to the GSM service continues to realize the targets set by the company.
For several months now cell phone vendors have been pushing GT&T's "service exchange" offer which includes a new instrument at a cost of $2,999.00, the lowest on the local market. George told Stabroek Business that the company's initiative to offer more service to its cellular customers included the introduction of prepaid roaming in the Caribbean which, while not yet commercially launched, is already available to GT&T"s customers.
Asked whether the cellular industry was witnessing "a requiem" for the TDMA service George said that while GT&T was committed to retaining the service until 2008 the service was definitely on the wane. Consumer advocates have alluded to the possibility of a price tussle for market share between the two cellular service providers. An industry source told Stabroek Business that the new competitive environment resulting from the advent of Digicel had placed "a greater responsibility" on the regulatory body to monitor "practices that might be considered unfair to one or another of the competitors."
George told Stabroek Business that he shared the view that the new environment placed an additional monitoring responsibility on the PUC to ensure that predatory pricing and other unwholesome trading practices do not surface in the industry.
Meanwhile George has disclosed that the company's cellular service infrastructure buildout for 2007 includes the erection of a new cellular tower at the Providence Cricket Stadium "to take off the expected traffic" for the March Cricket World Cup matches in Guyana. Additionally, nine new GT&T cellular sites are currently under construction in various parts of the country including Georgetown, East Coast Demerara, West Coast Berbice, Corentyne and the North West District. The company also plans to erect a further eleven sites in various parts of the country including Linden, the Soesdyke-Linden Highway, the Essequibo Coast and on the Corentyne. According to George the company will continue to expand its cellular service infrastructure to take account of customer needs. He added that GT&T will continue to regard the upgrading of its cellular service infrastructure as "a work in progress."