Flow T&T has called last week’s court rul­ing on Fixed Num­ber Porta­bil­i­ty, “a vic­to­ry for cus­tomers.”

In a re­lease, Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Trinidad Lim­it­ed, the par­ent com­pa­ny of the Ca­ble and in­ter­net provider hailed Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad’s rul­ing last week Wednes­day which stat­ed TSTT is legal­ly ob­lig­at­ed to al­low fixed-land­line cus­tomers to change their ser­vice provider with­out chang­ing their num­ber.

In the state­ment, the com­pa­ny said, “For close to five years cus­tomers have been de­nied the ser­vice and com­pe­ti­tion sti­fled be­cause Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (TSTT) ar­gued it is not legal­ly ob­lig­at­ed to im­ple­ment FNP.

Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Trinidad Lim­it­ed/Flow Trinidad has al­ways ad­vo­cat­ed for fair mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion, and ex­er­cised all avail­able op­tions to make the case for a lev­el play­ing field in the lo­cal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions space for the ben­e­fit of all con­sumers, and the sus­tained de­vel­op­ment of the in­dus­try.”

The com­pa­ny ex­plained, “FNP al­lows for com­pe­ti­tion in the fixed voice mar­ket as cus­tomers are able to keep their num­bers if they choose to change ser­vice provider. Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy is to pro­mote com­pe­ti­tion. The rel­e­vant telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion leg­is­la­tion, reg­u­la­tions, and con­ces­sion agree­ment re­quire that op­er­a­tors pro­vide cus­tomers with FNP ser­vice when di­rect­ed to do so by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT). Based on a 2016 TATT de­ci­sion, cus­tomers should have been able to en­joy FNP ser­vice as of No­vem­ber 28, 2016.”

As such the com­pa­ny called Seep­er­sad’s rul­ing “a wel­comed re­sult.”

It added, “This sig­nals a tremen­dous vic­to­ry for cus­tomers and the wider in­dus­try. We are ex­cit­ed that this rul­ing paves the way for fair and open com­pe­ti­tion in the fixed voice mar­ket,” said Flow’s vice pres­i­dent, Si­mone Mar­tin-Sul­gan.

Mar­tin-Sul­gan added, “We are pleased with the rul­ing since every­one wins with in­creased com­pe­ti­tion. Our team mem­bers are ex­cit­ed about the many pos­si­bil­i­ties and ben­e­fits it now of­fers to the mar­ket when it comes to Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices.”

Last week, TSTT ex­pressed con­cern about some as­pects of the judge­ment and cer­tain state­ments made by Seep­er­sad.

The State owned com­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny al­so said it was con­sid­er­ing ap­peal­ing the rul­ing.