The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T Ltd (TSTT) this week com­menced the process to se­cure fund­ing from the fi­nan­cial mar­kets to cov­er the sep­a­ra­tion costs of its pro­posed re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise.

As such TSTT said it plans to fi­nance the re­struc­ture with­out the need for a gov­ern­ment guar­an­tee.

"TSTT an­tic­i­pates that, if giv­en ef­fect to, the high an­tic­i­pat­ed cost of the pro­posed re­struc­ture will be read­i­ly off­set by sav­ings in per­son­nel costs, the elim­i­na­tion of main­te­nance costs as­so­ci­at­ed with ob­so­lete plant and tech­nol­o­gy and rev­enue from new streams of busi­ness, which will par­tial­ly off­set the loss of rev­enue from voice call­ing ser­vices, lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al," a re­lease from teh com­pa­ny stat­ed.

In its re­lease TSTT re­it­er­at­ed that the pro­posed re­struc­ture has been ne­ces­si­tat­ed by sev­er­al fac­tors in­clud­ing the eco­nom­ic con­di­tions brought on by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic; in­creased con­sumer adop­tion of dig­i­tal ap­pli­ca­tions like What­sApp and com­mu­ni­ca­tions plat­forms like Zoom; which have pre­cip­i­tat­ed the de­cline in lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al switched call­ing, the lega­cy costs as­so­ci­at­ed with re­dun­dant tech­nol­o­gy in TSTT’s ex­ist­ing op­er­at­ing struc­ture; and the con­tin­ued in­dus­try-wide trend of sub­sti­tu­tion of low­er-mar­gin da­ta ser­vices in place of voice ser­vices.

"These and oth­er fac­tors con­tin­ue to have a crip­pling im­pact on the Com­pa­ny’s busi­ness and its re­sults, with TSTT’s rev­enue falling by $453 mil­lion dur­ing the past fi­nan­cial year end­ed March 31, 2021 – 18 per cent less than the pri­or year," it stat­ed.

"TSTT has im­ple­ment­ed var­i­ous ini­tia­tives to coun­ter­act these de­bil­i­tat­ing con­di­tions, in­clud­ing re­duc­ing non-per­son­nel costs in re­sponse to these trends. These at­tempts notwith­stand­ing, giv­en the cur­rent chal­lenges, the Com­pa­ny be­lieves that for it to sur­vive and get back to prof­itabil­i­ty over time it has no choice but to re­struc­ture its op­er­a­tions, and has made its pro­pos­als in this re­gard known to its em­ploy­ees and their rep­re­sen­ta­tive unions," the re­lease stat­ed.

TSTT is cur­rent­ly in con­sul­ta­tions with its em­ploy­ees and their rep­re­sen­ta­tive unions over these pro­pos­als.

"The Com­pa­ny is un­able to make pub­lic the de­tails of the con­sul­ta­tion process it­self, as the Com­pa­ny takes the view that to do so would be in­con­sis­tent with the prin­ci­ples of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice," it stat­ed.