Georgetown: The formal liberalisation of the telecommunications sector will happen as early as next week, four years after legislations were passed bringing an end to the three decades monopoly.
This was announced by Vice President (VP), Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo during a press conference on Friday at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre.
In July 2016, the previous administration passed the Telecommunication (Amendment) Bill to liberalise the Telecoms sector by ending the monopoly which Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT) had enjoyed.
The bill is expected to result in greater choice, better quality of service, and lower prices to consumers.
It also specifically addresses the expansion of telecommunication networks and services into unserved and under-served areas through the institution of new universal service programmes in an effort to further national, regional, social and economic development.
But the then subject Minister Catherine Hughes never signed the relevant documents to liberalise the sector.
“We are hoping within a weeks time we can liberalise the sector, a lot of preparations has been done,” Jagdeo said.
He said liberalisation of the telecoms sector does not depend on the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and GTT settling a tax dispute of US$44.1M.
GTT has taxes which are outstanding since 1991.
“The liberalisation is not dependent on a settlement there. If that’s the case, then GTT can always say ‘we never reached a settlement with you’ then you can never liberalise so that is not a condition for liberalization, reaching agreement on the tax matter,” Jagdeo said.
In January, 2020 over 4,000 persons signed a petition calling for the APNU+AFC government to get serious and formally announce the liberalisation of the Telecoms Sector.
Digicel, the main competitor to GTT, joined the growing calls.
According to Digicel, the change that the people of Guyana are demanding is long overdue.
After three decades locked into a telecom monopoly, Guyanese suffer from a poor choice of services, the mobile phone company said.
It has signaled intentions to bring a submarine fibre optic cable to Guyana once the sector has been opened to allow other players.
Several companies have been applying to operate internet TV, mobile services, and the landing of submarine cables to bring data.
“Liberalisation is a promise that we made a long time ago. Both parties agreed to this and we need to get it implemented. We are hoping by next week that could happen but we had to go through a ton of technical work doing that,” Jagdeo said.
The Vice President noted that with the opening up of the sector, Guyanese would be able to benefit from 5G services, more competition in the mobile telecoms market and the landing of more fibre optic cables.
“It sets up the basis for an ICT platform which we want to create thousands of jobs,” he added.
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