Aleem Khan

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly five years af­ter the last failed at­tempt to lure and in­tro­duce a third mo­bile telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions op­er­a­tor to T&T, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) has said its analy­sis now shows a new at­tempt this year could be suc­cess­ful, bring­ing low­er prices and bet­ter ser­vice for con­sumers.

On the oth­er side of the spec­trum, ex­ist­ing op­er­a­tor Dig­i­cel plans to wel­come the com­pe­ti­tion while TSTT thinks the mar­ket may be too small.

In a state­ment sent to the Busi­ness Guardian on Au­gust 14, TATT said it has "un­der­tak­en an eco­nom­ic analy­sis of the po­ten­tial en­try of a third play­er in­to the mo­bile mar­ket. Based on this analy­sis, it was iden­ti­fied that there is po­ten­tial for the suc­cess­ful en­try of a third mo­bile play­er."

Two days ear­li­er, TATT had ad­ver­tised that it "ini­ti­at­ed an open com­pet­i­tive process for the se­lec­tion of a third pub­lic mo­bile telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions op­er­a­tor."

The suc­cess­ful bid­der will op­er­ate on the 700 mega­hertz (MHz) band.

TATT said the open­ing up of the pro­vi­sion of mo­bile ser­vices to a third com­pa­ny is in ad­her­ence to "free mar­ket prin­ci­ples." The au­thor­i­ty said one of the pri­ma­ry ob­jects of the leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing it, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act of 2001, is "to es­tab­lish the con­di­tions for an open mar­ket for telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices, in­clud­ing con­di­tions for fair com­pe­ti­tion."

For the full ar­ti­cle go here....

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers