Submitted by Anthony Davis

“The battle for the number one spot in Barbados’ lucrative telecommunications market is back on. Former monopoly provider Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) today served notice that it will not ‘roll over’ and play dead while its main competitor Digicel  continues its expansion.” – Barbados Today 6 November 2014

They have billions to spend on buying out a company to obtain monopoly status, but they don’t have any money to spend on a Barbadian Call Centre which would stop people from  asking where well-known places and towns in Barbados are? We don’t need a juggernaut – especially when LIME is involved. That will bring us more headaches than when it held the monopoly before.

I find it despicable that Flow jumped into bed with LIME without even telling its workers. That’s not the way to treat workers!

The main problem here will be the number of people who will be fired, thereby putting more strain on the Government coffers, because many will claim unemployment benefits, and some will have to go cap-in-hand to the Welfare Department also. LIME is the one with the sour grapes because it lives up to its name as spelled out in its acronym. I think that the FTC should reject this proposed amalgamation!

This may be good for Venezuela, and other parts of the Caribbean as they already have a number of Internet Providers, and so there is already competition there. There would be no competition here – except Digicel. For Digicel to stand toe to toe with you it would have to find the same size shoes as you and Flow put together. It would have to be GARGANTUAN – and it cannot be if you are allowed to become the BEHEMOTH you want to be!

It would NOT be FAIR!

Under the headline “TOO SOUR  BLP FEARS INCREASES WITH LIME/FLOW MERGER” on the back page of Barbados TODAY dated 07 November, 2014, Kerrie Symmonds, Shadow Minister for Industry and Commerce, stated: “My own view about the Government of Barbados is that they have allowed LIME to flex its muscles in the marketplace for far too long without bringing them to the table and trying to make them accountable for certain minimal standards of development.”

Member of Parliament, Kerrie Symmonds has highlighted two valuable points here. This Government has allowed LIME to get away with too much. An example is the laying off of Barbadians when they closed the Call Centre here, and transferred it to St. Lucia or even some part of South of America. Kerrie Symmonds makes a very valid point when he mentions this.

It is untenable!

This tells me that LIME doesn’t care about the unemployment figures of this country, but this “people-centred” Government did nothing to reverse the situation. LIME’s customer service has not been very NISE at all, so we cannot reward it by letting it become a monopoly again. Also, what are those in the lower echelons of our society to do when they must pay for domestic calls? All this talk about being here for 100 years will not help us if they return to a monopoly status.

Does that mean because they have been here for so long that they should continue to rule the roost?  That was mostly in the colonial era. We are an independent nation now, and we will decide what to do and how it should be done if this Government gets its act together and stop letting it bully it!

Mr. Symmonds’ last statement: “But if LIME now has possession and domination of the market, then it follows logically that they are not likely to feel any pressure towards improving the after-sales service to the consumer.”

That sums it all up. I rest my case!