Dear Editor,
I am writing again about the telephone companies in Guyana. Last week my little nephew celebrated his sixth birthday.
These days our relatives are mostly overseas and on his birthday many of them were calling us on my Digicel phone to wish the little man happy birthday. The calls were so bad that we could hardly make out what they were saying. Most of them called several times trying to talk to us. At one time I returned a call to my niece and then she was able to speak to us clearly.
I do not understand why in this day and age we still have to endure such poor calls. If my memory serves me correctly, Digicel said in their ads some time ago that they want to be able to have their own international service and stop going through GT&T. Well after last week I think that it’s high time that they are allowed to do just that.
I switched to Digicel because where we live the Digicel service is better, but it is like we say in Guyana, run from the jumbie and butt-up with the coffin because I still have to put up with the poor GT&T overseas service.
It is time that the government allow Digicel to have their own international lines. I wonder if when the government officials have to get calls from overseas if they have to endure the same poor quality service from GT&T.
Yours faithfully,
Parasram Persaud
Editor’s note
We sent a copy of this letter to Mr Terry Holder, Deputy Manager/Public Communication of GT&T for any comments he may have wished to make and received the following response from Mr Gene Evelyn, Director Rate Making:
“Thanks for the opportunity to response to Mr Persaud’s letter.
“We understand Mr Persaud’s frustration and herein seek to explain the issues which may have led to his experience.
“GT&T wishes to advise that there are individuals who are bringing international phone calls into Guyana by a variety of means and utilizing the mobile networks of both GT&T and Digicel to distribute these calls locally to Guyanese consumers. The average customer becomes aware of this when and if he/she receives an international call ‘from’ a local cell phone number.
This illegal activity by these bypass operators hurts our image, as demonstrated by Mr Parasram Persaud’s letter, because these inbound calls are usually of very poor quality, but the recipient has no way of knowing that the problem does not lie with our network.
“As early as February 2008, we had sought Digicel’s collaboration in a public notice to alert the public to this problem. We had proposed the following notice:
“There are individuals who are bringing international phone calls into Guyana by a variety of means and utilizing our networks to distribute these calls to Guyanese consumers.
This activity hurts our image by degrading our network quality of service. Also, when and if these calls are of poor quality, the recipient, quite understandably, is likely to conclude that the problems lie with our networks.
“Help us to preserve the quality of service you deserve. If a local GT&T or Digicel number shows up on your handset or Caller ID when you receive an international call, share the number with our Call Centres by calling Digicel Customers: Call 669-DIGI (3444) or GT&T Customers: Call 868-CELL (2355)
“Clearly, we must now ensure the publication of this notice.”
It’s GT&T responsiblility to pulg the loop holes.
Why should citizens be their police? I think not.
GT&T do your own investigation and police your network.
GT&T needs to take a break and let Guyanese pursue their means of effective communication.
This company is effectively inefficient and one simple example of this is the inability to connect to the Essequibo Coast from overseas. Added to that is the fact that there is no DSL service in that region. SHAME!
I have no qualms about private individuals bringing calls into Guyana. Once such practice can be legalized and the quality better, I say shove GT& T.
I don’t get it..where does the letter writer say he was using illegitimate services ? The service on either network sucks.
GTT has responded and they want to close the loop holes, these calls are made to individual guyanese and they may / may not report the calls as GTT has requested. Then action will be taken.
What action can they take?
Guys do you remember when your long distance calls used to cost you an arm and a leg for a ten minute conversation? Today you can get approx 20 mins for five bucks on a calling card. Well there is a trade off between cost and quality.
Today most discount calls are made via voice over ip connections. These voice packets hop a ride along with other information,video,data etc incoming into Guyana and vice versa.
For instance many of our blog messages on this site are most likely riding along with voice packets into the Guyana communication network. IP is a send and forget transmission technology. In other words there is no retransmission. What makes it of any use at all is the enormous digital fiber optic bandwidth available in the USA.
It is next to impossible for GT&T to block these incoming calls since they do not use dedicated routes like in the old legacy networks. The tecnology does have limitations, and dropped calls, failure to connect, and choppy voice are among the disadvantages. To improve calls GT&T will need to provide more connection bandwidth.
GT&T are right being honest when they said that all sorts of illegal entities are now part of the small carrier business, this includes the mob, Some of these enterprises will give you no more than a ring connect for your 5 bucks.
In the USA your calls are travelling on Terabit Cisco router networks, That is trillions of bits per second. On the other hand I doubt if Guyana has more than a couple of 2 megabit lines connected to the Americas submarine cable via the Suriname cablehead.
Joe.
GT&T needs to stop blocking VOIP and let the communcations sector develop. Imagine the rates to India from the US via VOIP can be as low as US 1 cent per minute. The cheapest rate to Guyana is about 30 cents per minute if you’re lucky.
GT&T has carte blanche on the overseas call spectrum. Calls are terminated on their network so they have kept the prices aritifically high.
Digicel has indicated that elsewhere in the Caribbean, international calls are cheaper compared to calls routed through GT&T.
Recall the days when Digicel was not in the country. Recall how GT&T squeezed the people. Nickle and dimed for incoming calls, rounded up to the next minute. Now there is no charge for incoming calls and there is per second billing.
It is time the international calling spectrum be flung open for full competition. Then and only then will the people realize the cost savings on international dialling.
An attorney in Guyana can probably bring a constitutional action against GT&T for a violation of freedom of speech for blocking VOIP on the internet in Guyana.