Barbados Underground is fortunate to have Roosevelt King (ROK) and Chris Halsall as members of the BU family.  They are better known in Barbados for the role of Intervenors when the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) meets to rule on applications submitted by the utility companies. Two recent comments posted by the good gentlemen have resonated with the BU household and given us cause to question the effectiveness of the FTC and by extension the government of Barbados as far as its oversight duties are being managed.

In 2001 when the FTC legally subsumed the Public Utilities Board and was given a wider scope to monitor, educate, investigate, and enforce fair competition and consumers’ rights by service providers and consumers, there was high expectation by the Barbadian public. This came against a background where historically there was an acceptance, especially in the absence of a vibrant culture of consumerism, that consumers were being taken to the cleaners by the utilities and merchants in general. We remember well that the then government represented by Arthur, Toppin, Eastmond et al did a good job of selling Barbadians on the FTC concept.

Eight years later the jury is out on whether the FTC has been able to satisfy the expectations of the Barbadian public. Have they been effective and proactive as set out in their core values?

Under the blog The Important Role Of The Intervenor At FTC Hearings ROK made the observation that the oversight of the Price Cap Mechanism (PCM) is not being reviewed at the end of each period by the FTC as mandated under the law. The PCM to the layman is a complicated pricing arrangement approved by the FTC which impacts the revenue levels of LIME formerly Cable and Wireless Ltd and ultimately the price end consumers have to pay for services. Why would consumers have to take the FTC to court as suggested by ROK? Isn’t the FTC suppose to be the watchdog entity which ensures under the Consumer Protection Act and Fair Competition Act Barbadian consumers are protected?

The other comment was made by Chris Halsall under the LIME Continues To Squeeze blog. Barbados has joined other markets around the world in liberalizing the telecommunications sector driven by WTO obligations. Our market has been monopolized by LIME formerly Cable and Wireless over the years going back to our pre-independence period. The process of liberalization has meant that  new legislation, policies and agreements has had to be created to enable and facilitate the new way of doing business in the telecommunications sector post- liberalization.

Of concern to Chris Halsall which he further articulated  on his blog is the fact that despite legislation local competitive long distance providers – Sunbeach, Blue Communications, and TeleBarabdos – have been trying to purchase the required interconnecting circuits from the Cable & Wireless without success, even through they are clearly defined within the Policy. BU family members are free to download the relevant legislation from the government website of the Barbados Two Stage Dialing Policy and Barbados Equal Access and Indirect Access Policy. We have deliberately tried not to use geek language because we anticipate that many in the BU family are not technically inclined like ourselves. On Chris’ website he further explained that right now it is illegal for any of the competitive carriers to offer international calling to the Barbados public, other than their own customers on their own network. They are only able to bring international traffic in and terminate it on the Cable & Wireless network.

What the above means is that LIME formerly Cable and Wireless continues to maintain a monopoly on all outgoing international calls, a very profitable part of the business. This is despite being promised by the previous government that with the establishment of the FTC that the enactment of the Fair Competition Act Barbadian consumers would benefit from the dismantlement of the monopolistic beast LIME, formerly Cable and Wireless. If we understand the problem correctly  the Reference Interconnection Offer (RIO) … is a standard offer for services which LIME must make available to any and all requesting competitive telephony carriers. Unfortunately, the previous versions lacked a definition for “Outgoing International Call Termination”. This meant that while a carrier could bring calls into Barbados, they were not allowed to take them out.

The question which Barbadians must ask themselves is why our FTC with its army of highly paid staff and Commissioners would renege in their duty to Barbadians consumers by not ensuring that in the RIO, the  Outgoing International Call Termination is adequately defined to allow competition for LIME in the outbound call segment of the market?

The second question is if the government of Barbados is serious about reducing prices and the cost of living, why has the Prime Minister not intervened to date to signal to the FTC that the undefined RIO targeting Outgoing International Call Termination needs to be remedied? The time for old talk has passed!

This is a highly technical and complicated area but one that we view as important enough to engage on behalf of the PEOPLE. In the coming weeks we will be lending what little support we can to the cause to demystify this matter for the BU family.