Dear Editor,
The arguments between the two telephone service providers has flared up once again. True to its usual pattern it starts with call from a Digicel CEO for the pace of the liberalization process to be stepped up and it is followed up with a strident rebuttal from GT&T. Never mind that the new Digicel CEO said that it was not about red versus blue but about Guyana, it is always played out as red versus blue by the time GT&T responds.
This time around, as if to match Digicel with the new CEO speaking, GT&T has unleashed a new voice, but with the same old message, Mr Yog Mahadeo. All that these two gentlemen have said over the last few days is well documented in the daily newspapers so I will not repeat any of that here; it is for readers like myself to judge their statements on their merits. But there is a responsibility on the part of the reporters to question these gentlemen based on the available facts.
I am surprised that Mr Yog Mahadeo was allowed to get away with making statements that contradict the available facts. On September 16, 2008, Mr Michael Prior, the Presi-dent and Chief Executive of ATN, the majority owner of GT&T, said the following during a conference call to discuss the company’s Q2 2008 earnings:
“Next is the wireless business in Guyana. Not quite as happy a quarter. In fact, unhappy quarter there. Our GSM subscriber base had its first year-on-year decline. We ended the quarter at about 277,000 subscribers compared to about 305,000 in 2007 second quarter. That is a 16% decline, and it is also an 8% decline from the first quarter of 2008.” (http://seekingalpha.com/article/95825-atlantic-tele-network-inc-q2-2008-earnings-call-transcript)
What Mr Yog Mahadeo said is that GT&T has 340,000 subscribers and that statement leads to two questions. Is Mr Yog Mahadeo looking at the same numbers as his Chairman Mr Michael Prior? If the answer to that question is yes, then the second question for Mr Mahadeo is, did GT&T add 63,000 customers in the third quarter of 2008?
I can assure him that I may be one of the 63,000 persons whom he can count in Q3 since I had to return to my GT&T phone after my experiences in June, which I described in an earlier letter. My international calls on Digicel routed through GT&T were so bad that I now have my Digicel phone for local communication and my GT&T phone for international. I said in that earlier letter and I repeat here that it is time for the government to allow Digicel to have their own international lines. Maybe the government should explain to us why the negotiations are taking so long.
Yours faithfully,
Parasram Persaud
Editor’s note
We sent a copy of this letter to Mr Terry Holder, Deputy General Manager/ Public Communications, Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company for any comments he may have wished to make and received the following response from Mr Yog Mahadeo, Chief Financial Officer, GT&T:
“We thank Mr Persaud for his letter. Indeed, we are happy that this gentleman turns out to be one of those individuals that formed a part of our subscriber base for the period in question.
“I would wish to assure Mr Persaud that the President of our parent company (not the Chairman, as Mr Persaud believes) and I look at the same mobile subscriber base numbers. The reason I had raised the question of the methodology used to measure subscriber base is that in reality, in a competitive mobile market many subscribers hold more than one SIM card. In other words, many of my subscribers are also my competitor’s subscribers and vice versa. Moreover, there are other considerations. For example, how is an active subscriber defined? A person who has originated a call in the last month? A person who has received a call in the past month? A person who has topped up his or her account in the last month, week, day? How about a SIM card that is sold to a bypass operator and does not represent any individual at all? We have every reason to believe that many of our competitor’s SIM cards find their way into this black market.
“In other words, without an agreed methodology, consistently applied by all operators, there can be no serious discussion about market share.
“As an officer of a US publicly traded company, ATN’s CEO at intervals will have occasion to comment on GT&T’s mobile market share. And, as a responsible corporate executive, Mr Prior would prefer to keep his estimates conservative and consistent. He understands that it is prudent to under promise and then over deliver.
“Mr Persaud’s observation about the quality of inbound international calls is not unrelated to the issue of mobile subscriber base. In the Guyana context, not everyone that acquires a SIM card is a genuine subscriber. Hundreds of SIM cards are acquired solely for bypass activity. In other words, these cards are used in SIM banks to illegally route and distribute inbound international calls without reference to the legal international network. These ‘service acquisitions’ artificially inflate an operator’s subscriber base. Equally important is the fact that these calls are invariably of a poor quality and the operators of this illegal service are undermining the business of legitimate operators and defrauding the government of millions of dollars in revenue.
Most persons only grasp the existence of this illegal activity when they receive an international call and a local cell phone number appears on handset or caller ID. Or, they try to place a call to Guyana from overseas and find the quality to be exceptionally poor, not realizing that is because the call is being sent on a compressed, low-quality route with no true operator responsible for quality of service.
“Illegal traffic routing should concern all of us. These illegal operators are ‘free riders’ and allowing them to operate with impunity sends the wrong signals to investors and to legitimate businesses and taxpayers. These operators (i) offer poor-quality services because they are subjected to no regulation (ii) deprive legitimate operators of the revenues required to roll out the telecommunications network and subsidize local call rates, (iii) circumvent government imposts and undermine government revenues, and (iv) compromise national security by dealing in traffic that is difficult to intercept. For these reasons there needs to be a ‘zero tolerance’ for illegal inbound and outbound traffic. This is not a phenomenon that will disappear with the advent of competition.
“In closing, let me say that the excerpt given by Mr Persaud published above is entirely representative of our feeling at GT&T. We always strive to do better. We offer every day best value without the gimmicks and we think that in the long run that is what the Guyanese subscriber will look for. Still, we can and will always strive to improve and we thank Mr Persaud and all our past and present customers for their feedback.”
