People should take note of the effects of a monopoly

BY Staff
Published: December 4, 2008 in Letters

Dear Editor,

Now that GT&T have blocked VOIP totally on their network, I hope that all the people who are going to be out of work, and all the poor people who can’t afford to make direct overseas calls to ask their families for help, especially in the coming Christmas season, take note of what effects a monopoly can truly have. How much poorer they are going to be. I hope they won’t be too forgetful about it either.

Is it any coincidence that today’s paper mentions the SMS interconnectivity between the two networks? Could it be that Digicel is slowly gaining ground and GT&T is feeling the pressure? Well guess what people, it is the poor ones who feel the squeeze whilst the big ones squabble over the spoils.

Don’t believe that the government will be able to come into this at all. After all, they started the whole shebang when they started fighting that they were losing out on their precious VAT which they were not getting from “illegal” call centres. This is the same VAT they discovered made them surplus millions every quarter.

Imagine that, the poor people can’t afford to pay GT&T’s overseas rate (so enabling the government to benefit from VAT), so they try to save their ’lil dollars (most likely asking for more dollars from their overseas relatives) using these same “illegal” call centres, who in turn are trying to find a way to make their own small piece, and what happens? The government is clamping down on the thieves!

Instead of asking them to register their business and file returns, they get very technical (I wonder who are their technical advisers) and give GT&T sole rights to VOIP, something that wasn’t even dreamt of when their contract was made. Or as my friend says, even charge a little bit on the thing, making their money at the resellers end. But no, they want the whole hog.

Let’s hope this nightmare can come to an end by or before 2012, when that contract expires.

Let’s hope we can survive long enough so somebody else can give GT&T real competition.

But we can make GT&T pay too. You know how? All of you with GT&T cell phones switch to Digicel. I wonder if GT&T would make more money on their overseas than on their cell circuits? Can the Guyanese people actually get angry enough to do this? Are they strong enough to say enough is enough? What say you? Digicel for GT&T?

Yours faithfully,
Nyall Jodhan

Comments

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6 Comments

guyanesestarfish says:

December 4, 2008 at 9:37 am

gt&t will make lots of poor ppl feeling really BLUE this christmas. america prohibits the blocking of voip ports and guess where they are buying their bandwidths from. gt&t is losing revenue, but, the company is making lots of money, just whip-out ur calculator & calculate an amount of landline subscribers times the average monthly rental alone. they just want the whole enchilada for themselves. the small ppl can’t doing anything about this the only set of ppl who can make a difference in this world is the press but the press need these companies for their ads. what the company is doing is digging their own grave. small ppl need money to buy newspapers.

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opgy says:

December 4, 2008 at 10:51 am

Hear hear Nyall!!

Bai’s switch to Digicel!!

SSDD

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Observerfromadistance says:

December 4, 2008 at 4:26 pm

SWITCH TO DIGICEL … PUT GT&T OUT OF BUSINESS …

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amen-ra says:

December 4, 2008 at 7:21 pm

The only best thing to do is boycott gt&t by cancelling your subscription or switch to another carrier.

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Michael Dabydeen says:

December 4, 2008 at 10:31 pm

It is amazing that GT&T wants to cut out VOIP services and allows person to use International Direct Dialing offered by them which cost in excess of GY$100 (US$0.50) per minute! Come on who pays that much in this day and age.

With implementation of things like SIP and other, GT&T should realise that it is slowing losing grounds and that it is trying to flog a dying horse. How longer can be bare to put up with this type of behavior. Will Guyanese ever be able to access full quality high speed internet access with all feature to do what you want, anytime soon! I guess not.

Switching to Digicel wouldn’t make much of a difference, because after all DIgicel is interconnected with GT&T leaving the hands in the tiger’s mouth!

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Frank says:

December 18, 2008 at 11:02 pm

Blocking voip is inposible
just look for sip/TLS supporting providers TLS is the same protocal that secures your bank transactions so blocking out TLS is no option for GT&T
the software Gt&T is using only searches for unencryted normal voip cals so any voip device that supports encrytion wel easaly bypass this blocking.
they soon wil find they payed 100.000 + dollar for a system that just does not work.

just google for sip/TLS happy voiping

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