Gov't should 'force' phone companies to up their game – Bevin S. George
He was speaking as a guest on the Speak Your Mind television talk show aired on Saturday March 12, 2016 on JTV Live Channel 55.
George was commenting on the advances being made in telecommunications in the developed world and said that while the Virgin Islands is struggling with 4G, those countries already are dealing with higher speeds of mobile technologies.
He pointed out that persons coming here to attend to business cannot cope with the slow speeds of data and thereby would lose not just business and money but credibility with their clients when they cannot deliver on time.
Host of the show, Richard C. de Castro said that for the new technologies to come to the Virgin Islands, the carriers here will have to invest in upgrading their equipment. "We have to encourage our telecommunications companies to upgrade," said de Castro.
However at this stage George interjected saying, "The Government need to squeeze their hand or something...squeeze it because we struggling to have 3G and 4G here and the other countries dealing with 5G. So that ain't good," he said.
According to George, too much time is spent among the companies fighting for rights to the 4G spectrum instead of making sure the territory advances in telecommunications.
De Castro believes that it is time that the Government gets serious about the use of the spectrum and reconsider the current model of allocation of the spectrum.
"I am one of the people when they were talking about the management of the spectrum and liberalisation of the telecommunications industry was saying that Government must own the spectrum and then assign various parts of the spectrum to various companies for a fee, rather than the way it is done where we give away the spectrum and then based on sales and private activity then the Government collects revenue."
He said better management of the spectrum will definitely improve the business and also force individuals to be more aggressive and increase their speed and improve their service.
Ongoing telecoms battle
Earlier in 2015, the TRC allowed only two out of three companies- LIME and Digicel- to apply for the Long Term Evolution (LTE) Spectrum (4G) to the exclusion of CCT.
According to the TRC, the local company never applied for the Spectrum during the time prescribed and was using the 700MHz spectrum which the TRC claimed was unauthorised.
CCT Global Communications then initiated legal action against the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) in objection to the 2015 Spectrum Award Process and the two parties appeared in the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court on October 2, 2015.
The court then granted CCT leave to apply for Judicial Review of the 2015 Spectrum Award Process. According to a statement from CCT on January 13, 2016, the court in its Judicial Review ruled in favour of CCT, overturning the Commission’s decision to reject CCT’s application for the 2015 Spectrum Award Process, allowing CCT to retain its current spectrum allocation, and clarifying services requiring royalty payments.
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15 Responses to “Gov't should 'force' phone companies to up their game – Bevin S. George ”
I would suggest you educate yourself a bit more about this topic. Then come forward with a more sound solution. If government officials would stop lacing their personal pockets the territory wouldn't be in this current state. Digicel would not have been here and they wouldn't be in this battle period. LIME, Digicel, and CCT can't and won't do what the market ain't willing to pay for. So be careful what you ask for. And besides if Government really wanted the service improved any they would get TRC in order and stop wasting the government money in court trying to appeal a case they lost against CCT. And they would have started over the award process and ensured it was a fair one.
L*ME is a set of JOKERS!!