Of­fi­cials from Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC) and Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Trinidad Ltd (CCTL), trad­ing as Flow, met Mon­day evening with the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT).

In a brief state­ment yes­ter­day, TATT said the CWC/CCTL team "pro­vid­ed a sta­tus on the doc­u­men­ta­tion re­quest­ed by the Au­thor­i­ty to ful­fil the con­di­tions for ap­proval of the pro­posed ac­qui­si­tion."

"Up­on re­ceipt of the re­quired in­for­ma­tion from the CWC/CCTL, the Au­thor­i­ty will con­duct a fur­ther re­view."

TATT of­fi­cials said they have not com­mit­ted to mak­ing a de­ci­sion on the merg­er by yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, in a re­cent news­pa­per in­ter­view TATT chair­man Sel­by Wil­son said the au­thor­i­ty ex­pects to com­plete its rec­om­men­da­tion on the trans­ac­tion by the end of this month.

"The mat­ter is re­ceiv­ing the ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion of the au­thor­i­ty and would be con­clud­ed by the end of the month," he said.

So far there is no word on a meet­ing held ear­li­er Mon­day be­tween Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd and CWC at the Hilton Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain to deal with dis­pos­al of CWC's shares in TSTT.

Last week, TATT had sug­gest­ed that CWC sus­pend its share­hold­er rights with re­gard to its stake in ma­jor­i­ty state owned TSTT, among oth­er con­di­tions. In re­sponse, CWC said it will work with NEL to agree to fair treat­ment of its TSTT shares. CWC con­trols 49 per cent of shares in TSTT with the re­main­ing 51 per cent con­trolled by Gov­ern­ment through NEL.

Last No­vem­ber, CWC an­nounced that it would be buy­ing Colum­bus for US$3.2 bil­lion in­clu­sive of debt. Un­der the agree­ment, CWC will pay cash of US$707.5 mil­lion and is­sue 1,557,529,605 new or­di­nary shares in CWC to three Colum­bus share­hold­ers, giv­ing them a 36 per cent own­er­ship stake in Ca­ble and Wire­less. The cash and share is­sue are val­ued at US$1.85 bil­lion. Colum­bus' debt of about US$1.4 bil­lion will be as­sumed by Ca­ble and Wire­less.

The pro­posed merg­er is be­ing strong­ly op­posed by the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers' Union (CWU), bar­gain­ing agents for TSTT em­ploy­ees. They have warned that the move will re­sult­ed in job loss­es in the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor and have stepped by their cam­paign against the move.

CWC chief ex­ec­u­tive, Phil Bent­ley has said that once the ac­qui­si­tion of Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al is ap­proved, the new com­pa­ny formed will cre­ate more than 500 jobs be­tween now and 2019 through growth in its ser­vices and by re­view­ing cur­rent out­sourc­ing arrange­ments. He al­so said the merg­er will en­able CWC/Colum­bus to pro­vide cus­tomers with en­hanced val­ue through quad play–mo­bile, broad­band, video and land­line ser­vices.

Bent­ley al­so said the merged en­ti­ty will strength­en in­vest­ments in com­mu­ni­ties and so­cial pro­grammes.

How­ev­er, Dig­i­cel, CWC's biggest com­peti­tor in the re­gion, has re­peat­ed­ly stressed that ap­proval of the trans­ac­tion will pro­vide CWC with mar­ket dom­i­nance in fixed broad­band and in ca­ble.