C&W pulls plug on objectors

CABLE & WIRELESS has blocked access by objectors to crucial financial and other information in its rate adjustment application before the Fair Trading Commission (FTC). And at least two of the 17 objectors, or intervenors as they are being called, have protested, charging the move would, among other things, put them at a disadvantage and weaken their case on behalf of the public. The two are the Barbados Association of Non-Governmen-tal Organisations (BANGO), which represents a network of 147 bodies, and Alvin Cummins. C&W listed seven instances of information submitted to the FTC in “commercial confidence”, which it said should be held by the commission and not placed on the public record.

They relate to cross subsidy; cost oriented pricing; international direct dialled rates; calculation of the rate base; capital expansion; sales projections; and revenue forecasts. Those issues are at the core of an additional information request by FTC which it said should have been submitted along with the application. Under the Procedural Rules of the Utilities Regulation Act 2000, the company can ask that all or part of any document be held in confidence by the commission if publication would create a competitive disadvantage, but the FTC would make the final determination after a hearing. The intervenors insist, however, they must have access to adequate information upon which to base their objections, and that a claim of confidentiality of pertinent information would negate the fairness of the rate hearing.

“Cable & Wireless’s claim of confidentiality of this information denies the public essential information of the process upon which rate changes might be instituted that will affect their day-to-day existence,” Cummins charged in a letter to the FTC last Friday. Further, he said, it had not “stated how public disclosure of this information will be to the advantage of the consumer as opposed to the disadvantage to (sic) Cable & Wireless”. “Cable & Wireless by withholding vital information from the intervenors (sic) is delaying the process of objections to their application with consequent possible and probable extension to the timelines established by the commission, delay in the process of interconnectivity, and possible delay in implementation of rates that are more favourable to the consumer.” Cummins added that adequate information, in the absence of information claimed to be confidential, upon which a case for the rebalancing of international and domestic revenue, and cost oriented pricing had not been provided.