Former Prime Minister Dean Barrow Addresses Legal Implications of BTL’s Acquisition of SMART

In continuing the matter of the legality of a monopoly in the telecommunication sector, the issue was highlighted this month by former Public Utilities Commission Chairman John Avery, who had questioned whether the acquisition would violate the very laws designed to promote competition in the sector. Avery, who served as PUC Chairman for twelve and a half years, has argued that eliminating competition through a buyout is not a lawful option.  According to Avery, the justification offered by BTL, that competition results in a redundancy of assets, only reinforces concerns that the real intent of the acquisition is to eliminate Speednet as a competitor. He noted that BTL does not require Speednet’s infrastructure or license to survive, pointing out that BTL already earns more than all other telecommunications providers combined.  Avery further emphasized that Belize spent nearly four decades and hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds transitioning away from monopoly control and toward a competitive telecommunications market. As a matter of fact, former Prime Minister Dean Barrow addressed the legal implications of the proposed acquisition and whether it may be in violation of the Telecommunications Act. Barrow also reflected on the 2011 nationalization of BTL, explaining that one of his objectives at the time was to safeguard the sector from future monopoly control once another administration took office.

RT. Hon. Dean Barrow, Former Prime Minister: “There is this whole issue that I haven’t looked at it myself, but that I understand Mr. John Avery, who used to be the chair of the PUC, the issue he raised about the law and the question of whether it is not inherently or incipiently a violation of the law, the Telecommunications Act, the regulatory framework, the legal regulatory framework for a detail to be, in fact, intent on this purchase, which will result in a monopoly. What is happening now is not at least straightforwardly what I had predicted would happen and what I feared would happen. I thought that the current administration would privilege Speednet Smart over BTL, again because of the Prime Minister’s family connection with Speednet. And that’s how it started. But here it is now that the privilege or the privileging of Speednet is not by giving them government business to compete with BTL it is by obliging BTL to buy speednet for a price that nobody believes is fair, is reasonable, that will represent how we say it it will mean that the sellers will “come up”. And so in that context, while it’s different from what I had feared, ultimately in a kind of roundabout, upside down, topsy-turvy fashion, I suppose it comes down to the same thing. They are privileging Speednet over BTL by obliging BTL to buy Speednet for far more than it can ever be worth. And BTL spending that kind of money is going to suffer a hurt in terms of their finances, in terms of going forward especially, and I keep coming back to this, in the context of this fast changing landscape that BTL will have to be extremely fleet footed and extremely solvent to be able to deal with. This doesn’t help. It doesn’t help from the point of view, it doesn’t help technically and it certainly doesn’t help financially.”

It is to be noted that the Public Utilities Commission declined to grant an audience to the National Trade Union Congress of Belize, which has publicly opposed the proposed acquisition and called for full regulatory scrutiny