– Dr. Luncheon
Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon, said Government is considering the liberalisation of the telecommunications sector, despite the leaking of documents related to such engagements to the press.
Dr. Luncheon was speaking at his post-Cabinet press briefing at the Office of the President, yesterday.
He said the process of liberalisation had seen the completion of the amendments to the existing telecommunications legislation, the production of draft licences for the two main telecommunications service providers, and draft licences for the Internet Service Providers (ISPs), as well as seven pieces of subsidiary legislation that cover the entirety of the operations of the telecommunications sector.
“Those documents, I want to believe, were acquired by elements in the media although they were shared by this office exclusively with ISPs and telecommunication service providers. Comments solicited from those immediate stakeholders indicate that the response was gratifying, both from the telecommunications service providers as well as from the ISPs,” he said.
Dr. Luncheon said that encounters between the ISPs and the telecommunications service providers were held when the documents were shared both in hard and soft copies, “and our plan was to, on receipt of totality of comments, we would have pursued public consultations almost simultaneously with the engagements with the telecommunications service providers on their submission in response to the drafts to licences, to the draft regulations, and to the draft amendment.”
Government has been voicing its concerns for some time now about breaking the monopoly held by the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company Limited to allow for the full development of the telecommunications and ICT sectors.