Rapheal John-Lall

If Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC) ac­quires Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al and be­comes a mo­nop­oly that could hurt the re­gion's eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, Fe­lipe Noguera, com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist and one time sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tions (Can­to) warned yes­ter­day.

"Ja­maica has al­ready fall­en with­out a fight. The East­ern Caribbean is putting up a fight but Ca­ble and Wire­less is say­ing that they do not need them. The prob­lem is the East­ern Caribbean do not have the where­with­al.

"The im­pli­ca­tions of a re­gion­al mo­nop­oly means high­er prices for con­sumers, job loss­es and lack of in­no­va­tion. The whole thrust of gov­ern­ment di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion will be re­duced, es­pe­cial­ly in those in­dus­tries that are de­pen­dent on telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions," he said in his con­tri­bu­tion to a break­fast sem­i­nar on the pro­posed CWC/Colum­bus merg­er. The sem­i­nar, which was host­ed by the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers' Trade Union (CWU), took place at the union's head­quar­ters on Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain.

Noguera said the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion sec­tor is ar­guably more im­por­tant than the en­er­gy in­dus­try for T&T, be­cause whilie oil and gas will de­plete and is non re­new­able, the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion spec­trum is a re­new­able re­source.

"It can be used again and again with dig­i­tal com­pres­sion tech­niques and ex­pand­ed al­most in­fi­nite­ly," he said.

Last year, CWC en­tered in­to an agree­ment to ac­quire Colum­bus for US$3 bil­lion. Crit­ics, in­clud­ing Dig­i­cel's ex­ec­u­tive chair­man De­nis O'Brien, claim the merg­er will give CWC the op­por­tu­ni­ty to push out com­peti­tors and "own the mar­ket."

Noguera not­ed calls by Dig­i­cel of­fi­cials in the East­ern Caribbean for strate­gies to com­bat the ac­qui­si­tion.

"Dig­i­cel was not speak­ing up for us but for their own rea­sons. Some­times in a strug­gle you must make tac­ti­cal al­liances with peo­ple who may be your op­po­nents. Where are the T&T and Caribbean play­ers in all of this? The lo­cal cred­it union move­ment sits on $12 bil­lion in as­sets and can lever­age those as­sets to ac­quire shares in TSTT," he said

Noguera said the CWC/Colum­bus merg­er is the most im­por­tant is­sue fac­ing the coun­try since it is "about the sov­er­eign­ty of our na­tion. "

He said: "Tele-colo­nial­ism goes back a long way and Can­to was formed to com­bat this ver­sion of colo­nial­ism and to ed­u­cate our re­gion­al gov­ern­ments.

"When for­eign­ers con­trol your abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er it means we lose our abil­i­ty to con­trol our eco­nom­ic fu­ture."

Al­so speak­ing at the sem­i­nar was David Ab­dul­lah, po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), who not­ed that ad­vo­cates of pri­va­ti­za­tion claim it brings di­ver­si­ty to the mar­ket. How­ev­er, the re­al­i­ty is dif­fer­ent from the­o­ret­i­cal ar­gu­ments, he said

Ab­dul­lah said the MSJ's po­si­tion is that the peo­ple of T&T must con­trol the strate­gic re­sources of the coun­try.

"Look at Ap­ple in the Unit­ed States. They start­ed off small and they grew big and ac­quired small­er com­pa­nies. The same things hap­pened with Mi­crosoft and even in oth­er in­dus­tries like the air­line in­dus­try. This is the con­cen­tra­tion of cap­i­tal in the hands of a few," he said.