Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tion's (CWC) new chief ex­ec­u­tive Phil Bent­ley has con­firmed that the com­pa­ny–which is a 49 per cent share­hold­er in ma­jor­i­ty state-owned TSTT–did put in a bid for a third mo­bile op­er­a­tor li­cence.Asked by e-mail to con­firm if CWC did, in fact, ap­ply for a third mo­bile li­cence, Bent­ley replied: "Yes, we did. We've al­ways said we want to in­vest in Trinidad and that we have to ex­plore all op­tions of do­ing so."

In the last Sun­day BG (May 4), Bent­ley hint­ed that CWC may ap­ply for a third mo­bile li­cence, though not spec­i­fy­ing this one.Asked to com­ment on how CWC's ap­pli­ca­tion for a third mo­bile op­er­a­tor li­cense would im­pact on the op­er­a­tional re­la­tion­ship be­tween TSTT & CWC, TSTT's act­ing CEO Rakesh Goswa­mi said: "TSTT's man­age­ment has not been in­formed by TATT of any of the ap­pli­cants that have ex­pressed an in­ter­est in be­ing the coun­try's third mo­bile provider.

"As far as we are con­cerned, CWC is still a 49 per cent share­hold­er of TSTT and, as such, is a spon­sor of TSTT's five-year strate­gic plan which in­cludes de­ci­sions on mo­bile op­er­a­tions. "If CWC has, in fact, sub­mit­ted a re­sponse to Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T's (TATT) in­vi­ta­tion for a third mo­bile provider, this would best be a mat­ter for TATT to com­ment on."TSTT is one of the mem­ber com­pa­nies of Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd, which is list­ed in the T&T Stock Ex­change.

In a re­lease on May 2, the TATT stat­ed, "six bid re­spons­es were re­ceived in re­sponse to its re­quest for pro­pos­als (RFP) for the pro­vi­sion of en­hanced da­ta ser­vices in T&T."TATT did not re­lease the names of the bid­ders.Ten­ders closed on Wednes­day, April 30, 2014, and were opened in the pres­ence of bid­ders who ex­er­cised the op­tion to be present, TATT said. The ini­tial clos­ing date of the RFP had been ex­tend­ed from De­cem­ber 13, 2013 to April 30, 2014, "to al­low po­ten­tial bid­ders time to com­plete their sub­mis­sions," TATT said.

The RFP is in­tend­ed to at­tract providers of en­hanced mo­bile da­ta ser­vices via "the pro­vi­sion of a pub­lic do­mes­tic mo­bile telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work and pub­lic telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices by a po­ten­tial third mo­bile op­er­a­tor; the award of the 800 mega­hertz (Mhz) and 1900 Mhz spec­trum to el­i­gi­ble mo­bile op­er­a­tor(s); and the award of the 700 Mhz spec­trum to mo­bile op­er­a­tors."TATT said it ex­pects to com­plete the ten­der eval­u­a­tion process "in three to four months."

There are cur­rent­ly on­ly two le­gal mo­bile tele­phone op­er­a­tors in T&T: De­nis O'Brien's Dig­i­cel and TSTT.When asked if Dig­i­cel had planned to bid, via e-mail, Dig­i­cel spokesper­son Pen­ny Gomez had said last year be­fore the ten­der closed: "As with any pro­gres­sive or­gan­i­sa­tion, we will be as­sess­ing the 're­quest for pro­pos­als' from the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T to see if there are any pru­dent busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties we can take ad­van­tage of."