Chair­man of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned TSTT, Emile Elias, said yes­ter­day de­scribed as "legal­ly flawed" the Re­quest For Pro­pos­als (RFP) is­sued by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) in 2014 for a third mo­bile li­cence.

Elias was re­spond­ing to a re­port in the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day in which man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Colom­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Trinidad, Bri­an Collins, called on TATT to name the suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cant for the third mo­bile li­cence.

T&T cur­rent­ly has two li­censed mo­bile op­er­a­tors–TSTT and Dig­i­cel.

Colom­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, which trades as Flow, has pro­vid­ed ca­ble tele­vi­sion and broad­band In­ter­net ser­vices in the re­gion for 12 years. It was ac­quired by Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC) in March 2015 for US$1.85 bil­lion plus ac­cu­mu­lat­ed debt and the re­sult­ing en­ti­ty was pur­chased by US ca­ble provider Lib­er­ty Glob­al ear­li­er this year.

Elias said T&T did not need a third mo­bile op­er­a­tor be­cause the coun­try al­ready had about 2 mil­lion cell­phones for a pop­u­la­tion of 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple.

"In ad­di­tion, the RFP, which two years ago sought to in­vite ap­pli­ca­tions for a third mo­bile op­er­a­tor, was legal­ly flawed and can­not be the ba­sis for the new gov­ern­ment and the new board of TATT to act up­on," said Elias.

He added se­nior coun­sel has ad­vised TSTT, and had al­so ad­vised TATT, that the RFP should be "scrapped" and that the third mo­bile op­er­a­tor li­cence should be "com­plete­ly re­con­sid­ered as in­ap­pro­pri­ate for T&T."

The TSTT chair­man said he had been told that a se­nior at­tor­ney had ad­vised TATT al­most two years ago that "the sig­nif­i­cant ma­te­r­i­al changes in the pro­po­nents" of the third li­cence were grounds for the RFP to be scrapped. That ad­vice was ig­nored by the last board and ad­min­is­tra­tion, he said.

Elias said: "We have al­ways main­tained at TSTT that it was com­plete­ly wrong to com­min­gle the third mo­bile op­er­a­tor li­cence, which was con­tained in the RFP, with a spec­trum li­cence. It was an in­ap­pro­pri­ate com­min­gling.

"What we want TATT to do is for­mal­ly recog­nise that that RFP is il­le­gal, in­ap­pro­pri­ate, of no con­se­quence and that they can­not act on it. They should move to­wards the al­lo­ca­tion of spec­trum to the two ex­ist­ing mo­bile li­censees with­out fur­ther de­lay."

The com­min­gling was in­ap­pro­pri­ate, he said, be­cause on­ly new ap­pli­cants would have re­quest­ed both a third li­cence and spec­trum (LTE 4G), where­as there were two ex­ist­ing ap­pli­cants who on­ly need­ed new spec­trum.

Ac­cord­ing to Elias: "It was in­ap­pro­pri­ate al­so for CWC to be sit­ting in the board­room of TSTT, as the 49 per cent share­hold­er, through­out the prepa­ra­tion of the re­sponse to the RFP and at the same time they were en­gaged in con­ver­sa­tions to merge with a com­peti­tor, which was re­spond­ing to the said RFP."

He said even if Flow and/or CWC re­ceived a third mo­bile li­cence, they have no in­fra­struc­ture in T&T to sup­port mo­bile sub­scribers.

Said Elias: "The in­fra­struc­ture of TSTT is not avail­able to them to im­ple­ment any mo­bile op­er­a­tions. Ze­ro in­fra­struc­ture of TSTT is avail­able to them."

Flow and CWC, ac­cord­ing to Elias, are in no po­si­tion to im­ple­ment any kind of mo­bile op­er­a­tion as they have no in­fra­struc­ture "and it would take them ten to 15 years" to put the ap­pro­pri­ate in­fra­struc­ture in place, giv­en the dif­fi­cul­ty of get­ting plan­ning per­mis­sion for new cel­lu­lar tow­ers.

Asked whether the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions reg­u­la­tor, TATT, can force or pre­scribe the shar­ing of in­fra­struc­ture be­tween op­er­a­tors as a con­di­tion for the grant of spec­trum, Elias said TSTT is meet­ing with its at­tor­neys and in­tends to write to TATT on the sev­er­al is­sues for­mal­ly next week.

De­scrib­ing TSTT rent­ing out its in­fra­struc­ture to a com­peti­tor as akin to cut­ting off the com­pa­ny's nose to spoil its face, Elias said: "I do not see that this new TATT board or the new Gov­ern­ment would en­gage in that kind of ac­tiv­i­ty, which is so self-de­struc­tive to a na­tion­al com­pa­ny like TSTT."