Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad & To­ba­go (TSTT), Lisa Agard, has writ­ten to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) ques­tion­ing the pres­ence of the Blue Mo­bile Net­work un­der ex­ist­ing laws.

Blue Mo­bile Net­work, how­ev­er, claims it has been giv­en the green light to pro­ceed by TATT and the Cy­ber Crime Unit, once it re­moves the word ‘Mo­bile’ from its name.

Blue Mo­bile Net­work post­poned a pro­posed launch of a new mo­bile ser­vice for T&T this morn­ing af­ter dozens of peo­ple turned up to ben­e­fit from an of­fer of mo­bile phones and lap­tops at the cost of TT$1 as part of its mar­ket­ing plans.

Agard’s let­ter on Fri­day was ad­dressed to TATT’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Cyn­thia Red­dock-Downes.

Agard not­ed that through­out the day on June 8, so­cial me­dia plat­forms were in­un­dat­ed by a mar­ket­ing blitz de­clar­ing the launch of Blue Mo­bile Net­work and Agard point­ed out to TATT that the no­tice ad­vised that the en­ti­ty was “lever­ag­ing the net­work of an ex­ist­ing ser­vice provider”.

“This sug­gests that this en­ti­ty is a Mo­bile Vir­tu­al Net­work Op­er­a­tor (“MVNO”) ser­vice. The mar­ket­ing ma­te­r­i­al refers to “STAR – The Blue Mo­bile Net­work” and an en­ti­ty called Grapes Tech­nol­o­gy Group,” she said.

Agard added that a com­pa­ny search in­di­cat­ed that there is a com­pa­ny called Grapes for a Good Life Ltd, with a re­lat­ed per­son as a di­rec­tor.

“In any event, as TATT is aware, such a ser­vice and/or op­er­a­tion re­quires a Con­ces­sion by virtue of sec­tion 21 of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act, Chap 47:31. Sec­tion 21 (t) pro­vides as fol­lows:- ‘No per­son shall op­er­ate a pub­lic telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work or pro­vide a pub­lic telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice or broad­cast­ing ser­vice with­out a Con­ces­sion grant­ed by the Min­is­ter’,” she said.

The let­ter con­tin­ued: “A dili­gent search by TSTT on the Au­thor­i­ty’s web­site can find no ref­er­ence to any of the en­ti­ties names above as hav­ing been grant­ed a Con­ces­sion. TSTT fur­ther takes the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­mind the Au­thor­i­ty that a breach of Sec­tion 21(t), is an of­fence un­der sec­tion 65(a) of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act and that any per­son who vi­o­lates that pro­vi­sion is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $250k and to im­pris­on­ment for five years.”

Agard told TATT that TSTT can on­ly sur­mise that this par­ty is ei­ther “seek­ing to op­er­ate in di­rect con­tra­ven­tion of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act” or “seek­ing to hood­wink the pop­u­la­tion in an at­tempt to ex­tract mon­ey from an un­sus­pect­ing pub­lic”.

Agard added, “In ei­ther in­stance, TSTT re­quests TATT act with­out de­lay to is­sue pub­lic no­tices in tra­di­tion­al as well as so­cial me­dia to fore­warn the pub­lic of the il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with this par­ty. We look for­ward to your prompt ac­tion in this re­gard.”

Mean­while, Star Net­work, the op­er­a­tor of Blue Mo­bile Net­work, is­sued a state­ment on its Face­book page claim­ing that the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT), as well as the Cy­ber Crime Unit of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, vis­it­ed them at the launch pn Fri­day.

“TATT ad­vised that STAR Net­work can op­er­ate as the ‘BLUE Net­work’ but with the word ‘Mo­bile’ re­moved. They have ap­plaud­ed our ef­forts to pro­vide bet­ter ac­cess to qual­i­ty de­vices and in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Star Net­work said.

It added, “We un­der­stand that TSTT is try­ing to mis­con­strue in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic by in­di­cat­ing we are a Mo­bile Vir­tu­al Net­work Op­er­a­tor. This in­for­ma­tion is mis­lead­ing and false. Our “Net­work” of in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal part­ners are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing su­pe­ri­or val­ue and we ex­pect that oth­er com­pa­nies (Such as TSTT) af­fect­ed by our in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions would be up­set.”

At the time of this ar­ti­cle, TATT was yet to of­fi­cial­ly com­ment on the mat­ter.