Govt violating WTO commitment

AS government proceeds with debate on the Telecommunications Amendment Bill 2004 today in the Senate, they are being told that they have violated theircommitments under the World Trade Organisation (WTO). That is the view of former Director of Telecommunications Winston Ragbir. He told Newsday that government committed itself to the WTO to open up the wireless and cellular markets five years ago, in 1998. To date that has not been done, said Ragbir. He also accused government of not being transparent, in that it had failed to inform the 13 foreign and local companies of the status of their applications for cellular licenses, for which they had applied three years ago.

Ragbir said  he had approved and recommended that “Digicel in partnership with CLICO,  Caritel, a Neal and Massy company and Open Telecom, part of the Gillette Group be given cellular licences.” He said the CCN group also took the matter to court to have their application included among the approved applicants and the judge ruled in their favour. Ragbir said the other nine companies did not qualify. He said to date the four qualifying firms have not been informed why they have not been granted their licenses. He said government was therefore in violation of WTO commitments, because they are supposed to be “transparent and impartial.”

He noted that the Minister with responsibility for Telecommunications, Dr Lenny Saith has been saying government will invite new applications for cellular licences. Ragbir also disclosed that the 2004 amendments to the Telecommunications Bill were presented to the committee which prepared the original 2001 Act and were rejected. Members of the committee included Ragbir and several other government officials  and included Washington DC based consulting firm, Dubois  and Clinton. He said the amendments were rejected for several reasons. Among them, “it was felt that the amendments would consolidate the position of TSTT and make it difficult for competitors. It would mean that Internet providers would now be regulated and licenced, which is not a government policy, and the freedom to uterlise this technology in a competitive and free way will no longer exist.” Ragbir said this has been tried and failed in several countries.

Other reasons why the amendments were rejected according to Ragbir, are that “committee members felt that with TSTT being the dominant provider, regulatory provisions would have to be made to ease the transfer from a single dominant provider to a competitive environment and the creation of a level playing field, as well as uterlising and controlling the frequency spectrum and numbering plan, which will make it very subjective and create inequality among providers.” Ragbir agreed that the Telecommunications Act 2001 needed to be amended, but insists that  those passed on Tuesday deals “solely with the business of TSTT and does not take the entire industry into consideration”.