Does the BU family remember the issue of Opera Telecom which was ‘flogged’ by Adrian Loveridge in the Bajan blogosphere a few months back? Back then the Nation newspaper and the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) advertised a game of chance called Lucky Numbers which was sponsored by Opera Telecom. Despite repeated calls to the local media to publish the winners, the voices of the PEOPLE were ignored. To this day we have no record that the winners were publicized. It is noteworthy that this matter after being publicized in the blogosphere has never been followed by mainstream media. We can only surmise that the media houses sought to play dead on this issue because Barbados Free Press (BFP) and Barbados Underground (BU) touched the story first.

For many of us who have become very cynical about the role of media houses in Barbados, it has registered as no surprise.

Barbadians may have believed that the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) would have intervened when informed of the injustice being perpetrated by Opera Telecom, and facilitated by local media houses, instead they fed us the bureaucratic spiel, and the inevitable brick wall was hastily reached. A search on BU, BFP or Google should acquaint the BU family that the Opera Telecom company has had its fair share of brushes with the regulatory bodies in several jurisdictions around the globe.

Thanks to a BU family member who visits from the UK we were made aware that yet again Opera Telecom was named in a class action suit in the USA. The complaint listed is ‘charging wireless subscribers for various services without their consent’.

Having read about the many violations committed by telecommunications companies in the developed world, it made us wonder if similar violations are occurring in Barbados. The big challenge which Barbados faces is the lack of knowledgeable consumer advocates to detect and publicize violations in the telecommunications sector. We mean no disrespect to our fellow blogger Chris Halsall who owns Ideas 4 Lease//Halsall. It seems like he has been the lone ranger in the David and Goliath fight against Cable & Wireless, soon we will have to add Digicel to the list. Even the FTC seems to be struggling to represent the interest of Barbadians in their encounters with C&W to date. Let us remember that it was the FTC which agreed to an accounting measure to be used by C & W Limited, which according to people who should know is a system which works best in a competitive market. The last time we checked C & W limited was the monopoly player offering fixed lines services.

We continue to ask who will act on behalf of the PEOPLE.

Will it be the media?

Will it be the government?

Or will it be business as usual?