?KINGSTOWN, St Vin­cent–Irish-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider, Dig­i­cel, said the pro­posed merg­er of Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC), will lead to a mo­nop­oly in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (SVC) and oth­er re­gion­al mar­kets.

Dig­i­cel is urg­ing re­gion­al reg­u­la­tors to pre­vent or im­pose con­di­tions be­fore ap­prov­ing the merg­er. David Geary, gen­er­al coun­sel for Dig­i­cel, told a pan­el dis­cus­sion and pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion here Mon­day night that the merg­er "is with­out doubt the most im­por­tant thing that's hap­pened in the tele­coms in­dus­try since the in­dus­try was lib­er­alised all those years ago.

"...It is about Ca­ble and Wire­less and Colum­bus cre­at­ing what will be a mo­nop­oly over fixed tele­phone, fixed In­ter­net, and sub­scrip­tion TV ser­vices," he said, an al­le­ga­tion that the CWC and Colum­bus rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the event de­nied. CWC, which op­er­ates in the Caribbean un­der the brand Lime, is of­fer­ing US$3.1 bil­lion to ac­quire Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al, op­er­a­tor of Flow in the re­gion.

"It's been 140 years and, as I said, good, bad and ug­ly. The re­al­i­ty is that that com­pa­ny that we all knew and love to hate, no longer ex­ists. That com­pa­ny, which is this mas­sive com­pa­ny called Ca­ble and Wire­less...has been de­merged over the years..." said head of gov­ern­ment re­la­tions at CWC, Chris Dehring.

He told the na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion or­gan­ised by the Min­istry of For­eign Trade, Com­merce and In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, that what is left of Ca­ble and Wire­less is a small com­pa­ny called Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions that op­er­ates in the Caribbean, "which prob­a­bly the biggest mis­take they made was to keep a piece of the name..."

Dehring, a Ja­maican, said the fact that he is the longest serv­ing and the old­est mem­ber of the se­nior ex­ec­u­tive team of CWC is ev­i­dence of how much Ca­ble and Wire­less has changed.

"So, when you try to give us all the lash­es, we un­der­stand, but the re­al­i­ty is it is hard for us to, I guess, to be bogged down by that we try to move for­ward. It is a tough past to get by," he said.

John Reid of Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions said his com­pa­ny has in­vest­ed US$32 mil­lion in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and will cre­ate 500 jobs over the next five years. He said reg­u­la­tors should hold the com­pa­nies' feet to the fire and en­sure that con­sumer pro­tec­tion is put in­to what the com­pa­nies plan to do.

"So for us, it is all about in­vest­ing the mon­ey, build­ing the net­work, pro­vid­ing stan­dard prod­ucts across the re­gion–not just TV, the broad­band as well–and we've done that. And I can tell you, when I look at who is go­ing to com­pete against us in these mar­kets, I know if we don't get it right, they will eat our lunch. They will get the cus­tomer. They will earn the right to take the cus­tomer from us, if they do it bet­ter than us. And that's the last thing I want to do–not ex­act­ly a part of that lega­cy I want to cre­ate... (CMC)