TSTT CEO George Hill said the in­ter­est be­ing shown in the lo­cal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny by Ca­ble & Wire­less (CWC) could un­der­mine in­vest­ment pro­pos­als which have al­ready at­tract­ed in­ter­est from po­ten­tial fi­nanciers.

"While it is not the prac­tice for TSTT's man­age­ment to dis­cuss own­er­ship struc­ture, the com­pa­ny has not­ed the com­ments from the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er, Ca­ble & Wire­less Phil Bent­ley as to how CWC would chart a course for TSTT's fu­ture, de­fend its mar­ket against in­ter­na­tion­al com­peti­tors, in­vest in in­fra­struc­ture and sup­port gov­ern­ment rur­al ICT cen­tres," Hill said in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

He said CWC's plan is sim­i­lar to ini­tia­tives TSTT al­ready has in place and new ones that are part of the com­pa­ny's five year strate­gic plan pre­sent­ed to its board of di­rec­tors, com­pris­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives for CWC and Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (NEL), in Au­gust 2013.Hill's state­ment comes just days af­ter Bent­ley met with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai to dis­cuss ob­tain­ing a con­trol­ling stake in state-owned TSTT.

He said the com­pa­ny had pre­sent­ed its strate­gic plan to po­ten­tial fi­nanciers to source in­de­pen­dent fund­ing so as not to put any de­mands on share­hold­ers."Pos­i­tive re­views of our pro­pos­al by po­ten­tial fi­nanciers would have been based on con­fi­dence in the strate­gic plan, con­fi­dence in man­age­ment's abil­i­ty to ex­e­cute on said plan, good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and a track record of proven re­sults," he said.

Hill point­ed out that since the for­ma­tion of TSTT in 1991, the com­pa­ny has re­mained prof­itable with the ex­cep­tion of one year when there was a sig­nif­i­cant change out of its mo­bile net­work. He said the ini­tial share­hold­er in­vest­ment of $537 mil­lion has grown to the point where share­hold­er eq­ui­ty stood at $3.2 bil­lion as of De­cem­ber 2013.

He added: "More­over, with­in the last five years, with­out seek­ing ad­di­tion­al share­hold­er in­vest­ment or ex­ter­nal debt fi­nanc­ing, the com­pa­ny has ag­gres­sive­ly in­vest­ed al­most $4 bil­lion in cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture in the up­grade and ex­pan­sion of its net­work in­fra­struc­ture from in­ter­nal­ly gen­er­at­ed prof­its. On this jour­ney over the life of the com­pa­ny, TSTT has paid div­i­dends to share­hold­ers of $2.6 bil­lion with­out fur­ther eq­ui­ty in­jec­tions since their ini­tial in­vest­ment."

Hill said his vi­sion for TSTT "is a clear roadmap fo­cused on growth, re­turn on in­vest­ed cap­i­tal and most im­por­tant­ly, re­align­ment of the com­pa­ny to bet­ter serve cus­tomers". He said steps have al­ready been tak­en to de­vel­op TSTT in­to a ful­ly cus­tomer-ori­ent­ed, lu­cra­tive, mod­ern com­pa­ny.

He ex­plained that the strate­gic plan is for full align­ment of busi­ness strat­e­gy to the com­pa­ny's busi­ness in­fra­struc­ture; tar­get­ed growth in mo­bile and broad­band; spe­cif­ic im­prove­ments in op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies through de­ploy­ment of more so­phis­ti­cat­ed, IP-cen­tric au­to­mat­ed so­lu­tions; and 'first-to-mar­ket' de­ploy­ment of new, in­no­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy to the cit­i­zens of T&T.

Parts of the plan al­ready im­ple­ment­ed in­clude the launch in Jan­u­ary of T&T's first ever Gi­ga­bit Com­mu­ni­ty where res­i­dents re­ceive In­ter­net ac­cess speeds of up to one gi­ga­bit per sec­ond, as well as the in­au­gu­ra­tion in March of a rur­al in­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­ca­tion cen­tre in Cumana.

"An­oth­er first was achieved, when on April 15, the com­pa­ny si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in­tro­duced pi­lot­ed new Long Term Evo­lu­tion (LTE) wire­less broad­band projects in two rur­al com­mu­ni­ties in East Trinidad and To­ba­go. This LTE tech­nol­o­gy will play a key role is mak­ing broad­band ac­ces­si­ble in many oth­er rur­al ar­eas that are present­ly not served by any ser­vice provider," Hill said.

"Mul­ti­ple oth­er projects are al­so un­der­way in To­ba­go for in­creas­ing the de­ploy­ment of fi­bre op­tic based ac­cess, to en­able more cus­tomers to en­joy the ad­van­tages of broad­band in­ter­net."Hill said TSTT owns and op­er­ates the coun­try's largest fi­bre op­tic net­work, stretch­ing more than 5,000 kilo­me­tres across the coun­try and there are plans to ex­pand cov­er­age to an­oth­er 45,000 homes over the next three years. It is the on­ly full-ser­vice com­mu­ni­ca­tions provider in T&T.