By PAT DIAL

Since December last, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) under its Chairman former High Court Judge, His Honour Justice (retd) Prem Persaud CCH has been conducting Hearings to consider GTT’s request to increase landline rates. The Guyana Consumers Association (GCA) has been opposing such increases, and later in this article we will outline the respective positions of GTT and GCA and the consumer community.

As a spinoff of these Hearings, however, GTT has indicated that it has always been willing and able to supply landline telephones to those who require them. Many consumers have complained that they had applied to GTT, sometimes years ago, for landline phones, but GTT has never supplied them. Now it seems that the situation has changed and landline phones would be supplied on the asking.

If any members of the public require landline phones now, they may ofcourse apply to GTT, but as a service to consumers and to be able to follow up on their requests, they may send the GCA an e-mail stating name, address, and desire to have a landline phone. The GCA e-mails they may use are jainarined2001@yahoo.com or patdial26@gmail.com. If they have any difficulty in respect of their application to GTT, they may contact the PUC at their office at 106 New Garden Street, Queenstown, Georgetown or e-mail them at their complaints section.

Together with this easy availability of landline phones to those who require them, GTT are also promising to repair with promptitude landline telephones which have been out-of-order. This failure to repair telephones in good time and failure to supply landline phones have forced many people who live alone, the poor, the sick and the aged, to be driven to buy and use cell phones whose charges are 8 to 10 times more expensive than landlines. Many parents would like to have landlines so that their children could use the internet to help them in their studies since cellular smart phones are very expensive and inappropriate for the purpose. But GTT assures the public that these two lapses will be corrected and will be things of the past.

But back to GTT’s demand for increasing landline rates: GTT claims that the international calls which had always been priced higher than elsewhere, were always high-priced in Guyana by GTT so they could cross-subsidize the landline. The persons who paid these high rates were Guyanese telephone users trying to keep in contact with their relatives abroad. GTT are now complaining that these lucrative rates they enjoyed as a monopoly are being overtaken by the advances of modern technology and affecting their monopoly international market. As such, their gradually contracting international business could no longer subsidise the landline rates and so the landline rates have to be increased.

The GCA in addition to pointing out that every telephone operator in every country in the world is faced with the same challenge, has met the challenge by skillful management and up-grading their technology and has not surcharged customers. Most important, the GCA has shown that the landline is lucrative in its total earnings but these earnings have never been credited to the landline. If its earnings were credited to the landline, the landline would be self-sustaining for many years to come. In its filing with the PUC, GCA has identified some of these sources of income owed to the landline, but we could not list them in the interest of space of this article. However, we give an example of one such earning: GTT uses the landline’s fibre optic and copper lines to transmit cellular and internet traffic but the landline has received no rental for this which we estimate to be US$1.5 to US$2. millions per annum.
GTT tries to prove its case by hiring foreign consultants instead of having proper Accounts. If GTT had proper disaggregated and segmentalised accounts, whatever position they wished to have taken would be transparent and acceptable. But GTT, for its own reasons, have been fiercely resisting having disaggregated and segmentalised Accounts which every big public company in Guyana has.

It is well-known that companies choose consultants who are sympathetic to them. The GTT consultants use “models” to prove the case they are making. “Models” imitate reality, they are not reality and invariably produce conclusions based on the data fed into them. Proper accounts would have avoided the excursions into consultants, models and other such activities. The next PUC Hearing into this matter would take place on 16th January at 10.00a.m.at the PUC’s office and interested members of the public are invited.