Some of the as­sets of the Dr Joseph Laquis-owned Laq­Tel Ltd, which had been grant­ed con­ces­sions and li­cens­es in 2005 for the pro­vi­sion of mo­bile telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices in T&T, will be auc­tioned to­mor­row (Sat­ur­day). The com­pa­ny, now in vol­un­tary liq­ui­da­tion, was levied up­on by its land­lord, Tumpuna Park Ltd, Tumpuna Road, Ari­ma, for falling be­hind on its rent. Auc­tion­eer Ed­ward Soon is to con­duct the auc­tion sale from 11 am at Build­ing 3, (south), Ari­ma. Ac­cord­ing to the Am­era Cor­po­ra­tion's Web site, Laq­Tel is list­ed as a ten­ant at Tumpuna Park, a five-build­ing prop­er­ty with spaces rang­ing in size of be­tween 5,000 and 50,000 square feet.

Tumpuna Park Ltd''s leas­ing man­ag­er, Ava Pan­choon, said she could not say how long Laq­Tel had been ow­ing rent or the amount of rent owed. Laq­Tel was found­ed in 2002 by Laquis. On March 14, 2008, Laq­Tel, which was ini­tial­ly fi­nan­cial­ly backed by a group of lo­cal in­vestors, had its Code Di­vi­sion Mul­ti­ple Ac­cess (CD­MA) li­cence re­voked due to its fail­ure to pay out­stand­ing bonds and court fines. Equip­ment worth $1 mil­lion was al­so seized from its of­fices. The li­cens­es award­ed to Laq­tel and one oth­er bid­der for­mal­ly be­gan the process of mo­bile com­pe­ti­tion in T&T along­side the in­cum­bent telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions mo­nop­oly provider TSTT.

Laq­tel Com­mu­ni­ca­tions was suc­cess­ful in its sub­mit­ted bid along with the one oth­er can­di­date name­ly: Dig­i­cel. These two com­pa­nies were cho­sen to form the ini­tial process of com­pe­ti­tion in T&T's wire­less land­scape.