Negotiations between the Government of Guyana and the Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company (GT&T) aimed at ending the company’s 17 year-old monopoly recommenced earlier this week following a break in the two-week old talks.
Government and GT&T sources have both declined to comment on the progress of the discussions. However, an informed source told this newspaper that the negotiations could be protracted and that an eventual outcome should not be anticipated “for some time yet.”
GT&T’s current operating licence authorizes the company to undertake a range of services in the telecommunications sector including, principally, national and international voice and international data transmission for a period of twenty years. The company has argued that when the Government of Guyana moved to privatize the then state-run Guyana Telecommunications Corporation (GTC) in 1990 it was necessary to grant Atlantic Tele Network (ATN), GT&T’s parent company, a monopoly licence given the run-down state of the country’s telecommunications sector and the country’s small population and low per capita income levels. The company is, however, on record as saying that it accepts the reality of liberalization in the context of global changes in the nature of international telecommunications and has stated that “negotiation is the only way out of a negotiated agreement.”
Government has been signalling its desire to bring the GT&T monopoly to an end since 2000. In August 2001 the authorities produced a paper titled “Issues and Options for Reform of the Telecommunications Sector” and have also recruited several overseas consultants to advise on the issue.
GT&T has conceded that the question surrounding the issue of an end to its monopoly is not “if” but “when,” arguing that it is government and the company that must play the lead role in the quest towards liberalization.
In recent years, however, public discourse on the liberalization issue has been characterized by official criticism of the quality of the service being provided by GT&T and robust statements by President Bharrat Jagdeo advocating a hastening of the end of the company’s monopoly.
Government’s invitation to Digicel in 2006 to enter the local cellular service market was widely seen as a move to keep the monopoly issue on the front burner of the telecommunications debate and since its entry into the local market late in 2007 Digicel has indicated that it is equipped to enter into competition with GT&T on the international voice and data transmission market within hours of the end of the monopoly.
Digicel has also made several public statements critical of the GT&T monopoly noting that it is one of few of its kind in the region.
Stabroek Business understands that GT&T’s team for the negotiations includes the company’s former General Manager, Sunita Jagan, current Chief Executive Officer Major General (retd) Joe Singh and consultant Godfrey Statia. Atlantic Tele Network (ATN), GT&T’s parent company, has also assigned an overseas-based Attorney to the team. Government had announced some time ago that its negotiating team would be headed by Finance Minister Dr. Ashnil Singh and would include Attorney General Doodnauth Singh.
Several months ago Major General Singh had told Stabroek Business that GT&T was prepared to engage the government in talks leading to the end of the monopoly. Singh said that the company is fully equipped to compete for its share of the local telecommunications market.
While official critics of GT&T’s monopoly have said that the company continues to make huge profits from its monopoly of overseas communication, GT&T has argued that some of its returns from its overseas operations have been ploughed back into major improvements in the local telecommunications system.
Stabroek Business understands that the two sides may have arrived at a prior understanding regarding procedures for the official dissemination of information regarding the progress of the negotiations and that those procedures include the joint release of information to the media.
