Ja­maica is the first coun­try in the re­gion to ap­proved ac­qui­si­tion of Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions by Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC). Ap­proval was grant­ed by that is­land's Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­er­gy and Min­ing Min­is­ter Phillip Paulwell.

In mak­ing the an­nounce­ment on Thurs­day, Paulwell said he ob­tained ma­jor con­ces­sions for con­sumers in re­turn for the ap­proval of the ac­qui­si­tion by CWC of Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al's as­sets in Ja­maica–Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ja­maica Lim­it­ed (Flow) and Colum­bus Net­works Ja­maica Lim­it­ed (CN­JL).

Ap­proval by Ja­maica is on­ly the sec­ond in a se­ries of hur­dles for pro­posed ac­qui­si­tion which is al­so sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval in T&T and Bar­ba­dos, as well as the ap­proval of the US an­ti-trust au­thor­i­ties and that coun­try's telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions reg­u­la­tor. At a meet­ing in Lon­don in ear­ly De­cem­ber, CWC share­hold­ers gave ap­proval.

No ap­proval is need­ed from the reg­u­la­to­ry agency for the East­ern Caribbean, the East­ern Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty (Ectel), on be­half of Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.Up to late yes­ter­day, there was no word from lo­cal reg­u­la­to­ry body, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT), on the sta­tus of the CWC/Colum­bus re­quest.

Paulwell, who said there was lit­tle the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment could do to block the multi­bil­lion-dol­lar merg­er, said CWC had agreed to a num­ber of pro­vi­sions that would ben­e­fit con­sumers over time."What I have sought to do is to go be­yond the law and to ex­tract cer­tain con­di­tions, which I'm pleased that the com­pa­ny has ac­cept­ed ful­some­ly, be­cause I want­ed to en­sure that we would pre­serve com­pe­ti­tion as much as pos­si­ble and pro­tect the in­ter­est of the con­sumer," he said.

Con­ces­sions in­clude com­mit­ments for CWC to pre­serve ac­cess to Flow's un­der­sea fi­bre ca­bles, LIME poles, as well as oth­er broad­band en­try points to the coun­try to Dig­i­cel and oth­er com­peti­tors. Paulwell said these would en­sure that cus­tomers re­ceive the best val­ue, as well as en­cour­age new play­ers to en­ter the mar­ket, which could dri­ve down the high cost of In­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty in the is­land.

Mean­while, in a po­si­tion pa­per re­leased to the me­dia yes­ter­day, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers' Union called on TATT to "se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er the neg­a­tive fall­out of this ac­qui­si­tion for the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor with re­spect to the en­vis­aged reg­u­lat­ed com­pe­ti­tion in the sec­tor; for the pric­ing struc­ture with­in the mar­kets; for the so­cial and cul­tur­al ben­e­fits that the so­ci­ety could de­rive; for the hu­man re­source de­vel­op­ment fac­tor and for the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

The union is warn­ing of ma­jor job los­es with the at­ten­dant eco­nom­ic fall­out and a neg­a­tive im­pact on the pric­ing struc­ture with­in the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor be­cause of few­er play­ers in the mar­ket.The CWU added: "The merged op­er­a­tions would al­so di­rect­ly im­pact on the share­hold­ing struc­ture of TSTT and its vest­ed in­ter­est in NEL and con­se­quent­ly have a trick­le­down ef­fect on in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal who would have been se­duced to in­vest in NEL for per­son­al and na­tion­al in­ter­est."

The union called on TATT to re­ject the re­quest for ap­proval of the ac­qui­si­tion.