Nadaleen Singh

Dig­i­cel is not daunt­ed by the prospect of in­creased com­pe­ti­tion in the lo­cal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions mar­ket.Com­ment­ing on the Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP) is­sued by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) last month for a ser­vice provider, Dig­i­cel's CEO John Delves said the com­pa­ny is ready to com­pete if the need aris­es.

"We love com­pe­ti­tion, we be­lieve it makes us per­form to our best, in that we raise our stan­dards. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly a third op­er­a­tor may come in, it's a very com­pet­i­tive mar­ket. TATT did is­sue an RFP in 2009, and there were no suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants. But if there is a suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cant I would be hap­py to com­pete," he told re­porters yes­ter­day at the open­ing of Dig­i­cel's new Ex­pe­ri­ence Store at ANSA Cen­tre, Mar­aval Road, Port-of-Spain.

Delves said even if the third play­er turned out to be a ma­jor en­ti­ty like Voda­fone or Ver­i­zon he would not be wor­ried. He said Dig­i­cel has com­pet­ed with Voda­fone be­fore and it would be no dif­fer­ent in T&T."We have com­pet­ed against all ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al car­ri­ers and we have done very well," he said.In its RFP, TATT said it is "ini­ti­at­ing a com­pet­i­tive au­tho­ri­sa­tion process which in­cludes: The pro­vi­sion of a pub­lic do­mes­tic mo­bile telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work and pub­lic telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices by a po­ten­tial third mo­bile op­er­a­tor."

Delves said the prospect of more com­pe­ti­tion in the lo­cal mar­ket was not the rea­son why Dig­i­cel de­cid­ed to re­move roam­ing rates ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 1.He ex­plained: "We have al­ways prid­ed our­selves as be­ing the first to mar­ket with in­no­v­a­tive new prod­ucts, launch­es and ser­vices and this (the re­moval of roam­ing rates) is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of that where we are giv­ing back to the peo­ple of the Caribbean."

He said the re­moval of the roam­ing rates would not im­pact neg­a­tive­ly on Dig­i­cel's prof­its since the T&T mar­ket is on a con­tin­u­ous growth path."We know, a lot of peo­ple trav­el to places like Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua and Ja­maica. We want to make it eas­i­er for every cus­tomer to move around," he said.Cor­nell Buck­radee, ad­vis­er to the Min­is­ter of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, said the mo­bile sec­tor in T&T con­tin­ues to grow and com­pe­ti­tion "has served T&T well."

"The telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing sec­tors col­lec­tive­ly gen­er­at­ed $5.3 bil­lion in rev­enue in 2012, rep­re­sent­ing a 12.6 per cent in­crease from the pri­or year, with mo­bile ser­vice con­tribut­ing $2.2 bil­lion or 42.2 per cent of that to­tal."

The new­ly-opened Dig­i­cel Ex­pe­ri­ence Store of­fers sev­er­al spe­cial ser­vices. In ad­di­tion to cater­ing to the needs of cor­po­rate cus­tomers, the store al­so pro­vides fa­cil­i­ties for meet­ings us­ing video con­fer­enc­ing tech­nol­o­gy in an en­closed con­fer­enc­ing room, as well as free work­shops in its cus­tomer ed­u­ca­tion zone.