CNC3 News

The new Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T board has been in­stalled and among some of the ini­tia­tives to be tack­led will be the draft broad­cast code and de­vel­op­ments to en­able a third mo­bile provider to en­ter the mar­ket, the broad­cast mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem among oth­er ini­tia­tives.The new board was ap­point­ed in an of­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ny at the au­thor­i­ty's of­fice at 12th Street, Barataria.

Line min­is­ter Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith, Min­is­ter of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, said at yes­ter­day's in­stal­la­tion cer­e­mo­ny that the au­thor­i­ty re­cent­ly com­plet­ed and com­piled its re­view of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing sec­tors for Jan­u­ary to De­cem­ber 2012.He said com­bined rev­enues for the sec­tors amount­ed to TT$5.3 bil­lion in 2012. This, he said, amount­ed to 3.3 per cent of the na­tion's Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP).

"The telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor alone is es­ti­mat­ed at TT$4.1 bil­lion at the end of 2012 with mo­bile ser­vices con­tribut­ing the high­est to­wards to­tal rev­enues of TT$2.2 bil­lion.""An­oth­er big rev­enue earn­er in the in­dus­try in 2012 was In­ter­net ser­vices, which con­tributed ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$805.6 mil­lion. I con­sid­er these fig­ures to be im­pres­sive and ev­i­dence of a sec­tor that is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing healthy growth," he said.

The au­thor­i­ty's chair­man Sel­by Wil­son said to Grif­fith dur­ing his ad­dress at the in­stal­la­tion cer­e­mo­ny, "I would like to urge, that in fu­ture we nar­row the gap on the ap­point­ment of tran­si­tion boards."The au­thor­i­ty is re­al­ly ham­strung in the ab­sence of a board. The law is very spe­cif­ic on the func­tions of the board and what the au­thor­i­ty's man­age­ment can do with­out the sanc­tion of the board.

"In the last few months we have re­al­ly been strapped in terms of our de­ci­sion mak­ing process and in those in­stances when we could not de­lay the work of the au­thor­i­ty, I have stuck my neck out and have giv­en man­age­ment the req­ui­site au­thor­i­ty to pro­ceed," he said.Wil­son said from Feb­ru­ary un­til the board's in­stal­la­tion he had cause to "stick his neck out on many oc­ca­sions so as not to stymie the work of the au­thor­i­ty."

Wil­son, when asked about his com­ment af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny, said he men­tioned it in hopes that those re­spon­si­ble for the board's im­ple­men­ta­tion would move a lit­tle more quick­ly. He said Grif­fith was aware of it and gave him the au­thor­i­ty to use his best judge­ment to en­sure the work of the au­thor­i­ty was not im­ped­ed.

There were six new re­turn­ing board mem­bers in­clud­ing so­cial ac­tivist Hazel Brown, David Lamy and Simb­hoonath Sawh and three new mem­bers among them Dr Kim Mal­lalieu and Dr Ronald Ramkissoon.Wil­son said, in re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the broad­cast code, the au­thor­i­ty has "tweaked" the code "a bit" and "we're now in the process of fi­nal­is­ing the last amend­ments to the code which would be re­sub­mit­ted to the min­istry, hope­ful­ly, be­fore the end of the next quar­ter."

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of the third mo­bile provider in T&T, Wil­son said, in or­der to pro­ceed the au­thor­i­ty had to re­work its spec­trum plan and hold con­sul­ta­tions on the mat­ter.Wil­son said the con­sul­ta­tive process has been com­plet­ed and that doc­u­ment for the third mo­bile provider "is near com­ple­tion." He said the Re­quest For pro­pos­al (RFP) should be placed in ap­prox­i­mate­ly two months and said no "mean­ing­ful bids" would be re­ceived be­fore the first quar­ter of next year.

Grif­fith, in his ad­dress to the new board, said, for the au­thor­i­ty "statu­to­ri­ly man­dat­ed to reg­u­late the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing sec­tors, sound and ef­fec­tive cor­po­rate gov­er­nance is key."Cit­ing the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act, he said mem­bers of the board must dis­close a con­flict of in­ter­est and urged the mem­bers to meet to do so, open­ly and hon­est­ly to "al­low the busi­ness of the reg­u­la­tor, an en­ti­ty sub­ject to ju­di­cial re­view, to move trans­par­ent­ly and fair­ly."

The au­thor­i­ty, Wil­son said, is al­so work­ing on its 2013 to 2016 strate­gic plan and that he looked for­ward to the new board's in­put.

New Board

Mem­bers of the new tele­coms board are:-

Chair­man- Sel­by Wil­son

Deputy Chair­man- Mr Nazir Al­ladin

Di­rec­tors- Mr Simb­hoonath Sawh, Mr David Lamy, Ms Hazel Brown, Mr Farouk Ger­ard Mo­hammed, Dr Sat­nar­ine Balka­rans­ingh, Dr Kim Mal­lalieu, Dr Ronald Ramkissoon and Mr Asif Ali/