Rapheal John-Lall

The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go's (TSTT) avoid­ed the em­bar­rass­ing prospect of one of the coun­try's largest state com­pa­nies be­ing un­li­censed, and there­fore, tech­ni­cal­ly, an il­le­gal op­er­a­tion, by last night reach­ing an agree­ment on their con­ces­sion with the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT).

TSTT chair­man Emile Elias had ear­li­er in the day ac­cused TATT of act­ing "il­le­gal­ly" as TSTT had been left with­out a li­cence on Tues­day night un­til yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.He said he and TSTT's staff were dis­ap­point­ed in the way TATT act­ed in the process of the re­new­al of its li­cence.

He added: "TATT was es­tab­lished by the Gov­ern­ment by an Act of Par­lia­ment and I think it has lost its way. TATT seems to have for­got­ten the rea­son for their ex­is­tence and that is to serve the best in­ter­est of the peo­ple of T&T.

He asked: "These are the same peo­ple who own the 51 per cent of TSTT whose in­ter­ests are be­ing served by the il­le­gal be­hav­iour of TATT? Can they claim ig­no­rance of the very law by which they are gov­erned? TATT is sup­posed to serve the peo­ple of T&T."

Elias was speak­ing to the me­dia yes­ter­day at TSTT's head of­fice, Port-of-Spain.He said a ma­jor dis­as­ter had been avert­ed as the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Ran­dall Mitchell, and the Min­ster of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, An­cil An­toine, had in­ter­vened be­fore the li­cence ex­pired on Tues­day night.

The con­ces­sion­aire, the gov­ern­ment, has a 51 per cent stake in the com­pa­ny. It's rep­re­sen­ta­tive, min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, on­ly put pen to pa­per with the li­cens­ing agent late yes­ter­day.Ac­cord­ing to TSTT's doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed, it has been en­gag­ing TATT since last March on the process to be fol­lowed for its li­cence to be ap­proved.

Breach of the Act

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments, TSTT ob­ject­ed to the uni­lat­er­al im­po­si­tion of amend­ed terms in breach of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act and lack of con­sul­ta­tion.Elias added: "As of mid­night last night TSTT had no li­cence to op­er­ate in any of its five busi­ness seg­ments for which we have li­cences.

"Af­ter the close of busi­ness on De­cem­ber 22, 2015, TSTT re­ceived the draft con­tract from TATT. They point­ed out we had to sign the agree­ment by Tues­day night.

"We had four work­ing days to analyse the doc­u­ment. On Sun­day 27 a draft re­sponse to TATT's amend­ed con­tract was pre­pared. We re­spond­ed to TATT and al­so the min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for TATT which is the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

"I re­ceived the as­sur­ance from the line min­is­ter of TATT that we would be is­sued the ap­proval to­day. While that ap­proval is not in our hands, we have re­ceived ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tions through our CEO that we should have some­thing in our hands with­in the next hour or two.

"This means the re­new­al of our li­cence will be un­der sim­i­lar con­di­tions as the one in our hands," Elias added.

Eco­nom­ic fu­ture

"We want to grow TSTT's rev­enue. We want to mar­ket our prod­ucts and hope to have our five li­cences this af­ter­noon," he added.He al­so asked the Gov­ern­ment to with­draw im­me­di­ate­ly the Re­quest for Pro­pos­al (RFP) for a third mo­bile op­er­a­tor.

"It is the opin­ion of TSTT this sec­tor is sat­u­rat­ed and it is a to­tal­ly un­nec­es­sary over­lap to in­tro­duce a third mo­bile op­er­a­tor. This is not log­i­cal. We want the Gov­ern­ment to re­view this and with­draw the RFP and not make an award for a third mo­bile op­er­a­tor in a sat­u­rat­ed mar­ket," Elias added.

Dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer ses­sion with the me­dia, he was asked about TSTT's op­er­a­tions dur­ing the cur­rent re­ces­sion and its fi­nan­cial per­for­mance.He said: "Part of the changes would re­quire an in­vest­ment that could be be­tween $600 mil­lion and $1.5 bil­lion.

"TATT said these things would be done in a spe­cif­ic time or we would face a $10 mil­lion fine. TATT needs a bush bath. TATT needs to re­think the rea­son for their ex­is­tence."He said he thought long and hard about TATT's mo­tives and what it was do­ing to TSTT.

"There needs to be a re­view at the po­lit­i­cal lev­el of the con­sti­tu­tion of TATT... the laws that gov­ern them and the way they have been be­hav­ing in the tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try. Are there oth­er forces at work that are not in the best in­ter­ests of T&T?" he asked.