PRIME MINISTER COMMENTS ON SPEEDNET/BTL SAGA

November 20, 2009

Earlier this week Speednet Communications accused Telemedia of sabotage after Telemedia said they would disconnect Speednet from its international connection. Today Love News spoke with Prime Minister Dean Barrow.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

"I not only understand what Telemedia has done; I applaud it. We from the point of view of the government made clear shortly after the nationalization that these contracts had in fact been examined between Speednet and Telemedia; a number of contracts. These contracts the commercial or the arrangements, commercial in quotations marks, between the two companies were designed to clearly favor Speednet in a manner that any objective observer would see as outrageous. At my last press conference I made the point that we the now government now controled Telemedia did not sit by and allow these outrageous arrangements to continue. So, to the extent that Telemedia commercially and contractually is entitled to put aside agreements that obviously were not entered into on any arms length basis then Telemedia aught to be encouraged to do just that. When they take that sort of an action they must be applauded for one reason above all others. Telemedia has been nationalized by the Government of Belize; compensation would have to be paid to the previous owners. That compensation must clearly come from two sources, from the profits that Telemedia will make while it is exclusively in governments hands and from the revenue derived from the sale of shares when government attempts to re-privatize Telemedia. If unfair commercial agreements designed to benefit smart are allowed to cripple Telemedia's viability or in any way interfere with that viability it will mean that Telemedia's profitability was affected, thus there will be less revenue out of which government can pay compensation to the previous owners. It will also mean that the lessened profitability would make the shares in Telemedia less attractive when government issues the prospectus and attempts to sell those shares. In that kind of a context it is ultimately the tax payer that would have to make up any short falls that result from those sort of development because if government cannot get pay compensation from Telemedia's profits or from the sale of shares the money will have to come out of tax payers pockets and that cannot be allowed to happen. Anything that Telemedia has to do to put right a situation in which smart is unfairly affecting Telemedia's profitability and viability must be done."

We asked Prime Minister Barrow to comment on Speednet’s campaign to get the Chamber of Commerce and Smart customers involved in asking the Public Utilities Commission to intervene.  Earlier today the Chamber of Commerce and Industry issued a release asking the intervention of the PUC in the matter. 

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

"There must be ways in which Smart; Speednet can in fact proceed with international calls without using Telemedia's platform. If that is technically not possible at the time, if there is a fairly simple solution, let the users of the Smart phone buy Telemedia's cards in order to make their international calls. I am sure that it can be sorted out and I am sure that telemedia has indicated that the intension is not to frottle Smart; the intention is to remove the disadvantage; the prejudice to Telemedia that the old arrangement. Telemedia as I understand it invited Smart to quickly negotiate those arrangements and particular this arrangement so as to ensure that there might not be any interruption in the service. Instead of doing that Smart has gone on some kind of public relations attack and has sought to the chamber and other. Well I am perfectly firm in my position. We have to recollect the backdrop that I sketched for you earlier. We have to remember the circumstances in which these grossly unfair were conceived when un-benounced to the Belizean people when the former moving force behind Telemedia also owned Smart and was determined drain Telemedia because ultimately any loss of profits would have to be made up by Belizean tax payers. In that context I do not see how anybody in his or her right mind can blame Telemedia for merely saying Smart come now and negotiate proper arms length agreements you owe it to your consumers to settle with BTL on an even equitable  basis so that there might not be any interruption in service in service. If Smart does not want to do that it is on them."

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