Having been a subscriber to Flow’s triple play service for many years, at the very moment I read that the Cable and Wireless (CWC) had bought Columbus Communications, known to us in Jamaica as Flow, I envisioned rates going down because of increased competition from the dominant player in the region, Digicel.

As expected, the acquisition has not gone down well with Digicel. This I couldn’t quite figure out until it dawned on me that Digicel was no longer just the mobile player that many in Jamaica know it as. Over the last 10 years, it has been on a hunt as mobile market penetration peaked and, in the last year alone, acquired five cable companies in the region.

A few years ago when Digicel acquired Claro’s mobile operation in Jamaica, if my memory serves me correctly, LIME did not squeal at a time when Digicel was truly in a position to call itself the ‘bigger, better’ network.

In recent times, LIME has been increasing its market share of the mobile market, but it has many more miles to go to truly give Digicel a real run for its money. With LIME’s parent company, CWC, merging with Flow, the proverbial playing field will become less of a hill and gully with more of a tendency to levelling out.

With an increasing percentage of the mobile phone population becoming hooked on mobile Internet and other data services, the prospect of faster connection speeds, plus the big grab of using cellphones to watch what would normally be viewed at home is the obvious that the LIME/Flow merger will bring.

With Digicel fuming at the acquisition, it is useful to note that, in 2013, after the OUR had made its decision on fixed termination rate, Barry O’Brien the managing director of Digicel said: “We are going to do to the landline business what we did to the mobile business when we launched back in 2000. Digicel has no intention of laying down a copper network. We are going to use wireless technology.”

In terms of its foray into cable TV, and the acquisition of Telstar, the Digicel boss also said: “While Telstar only operated here in Kingston and St Andrew, we plan to have a massive roll-out in terms of nationwide service, both in the existing (TV) infrastructure and in other areas.’

One can therefore get a background as to why Digicel has complained about the LIME/Flow merger. It seems that the levelling out of the playing field is not to Digicel’s liking.

I must confess that as I have grown used to, and hooked on, my iPhone and I am watching less TV content at home. For this reason LIME has to recognise that Flow’s customers will be expecting what the merger has been touting as a solid promise: Even faster broadband and a much-enhanced TV experience.

One area that Flow customers will be expecting an upgrade is the fixed-line phone when JPS trips out, as it has been doing almost on a daily basis, for up to an hour at times. The LIME fixed-line phone is powered by the voltage that comes through the phone line. Not so with Flow. Once a power cut hits, the phone service and the broadband ceases.

I have been told by senior Flow personnel that that is an area which will be focused on as the upgrade rolls out.

Quite apart from the fact that Jamaica and the Caribbean can use any good news, especially in terms of business activity, the LIME/Flow merger must force Digicel on to its ‘back foot’ if it wants to play straight down the wicket. Complaining that CWC overpaid for Columbus is, I suppose, just a knee-jerk response on the part of Digicel, but it also indicates that the dominant mobile player in the region is ruing not having snatched the opportunity to acquire Columbus/Flow.

A much-improved telecoms network, a better TV offering, fast broadband speeds, the ability to watch home TV on one’s mobile have been promised by this merger. What is there about it that is not to like?

The wheels of regulation spin slowly and I expect that it will be some months yet before the regulators give the deal the necessary stamp of approval.

In 2005, Digicel acquired 11 wireless operations across the Caribbean from Cingular, with resultant consolidation in five markets. In 2007, it acquired U Mobile in Guyana. In 2011 through 2012 it acquired Nextar, a regional IT player, Voila in Haiti, Claro in Jamaica. In 2013 to 2014 it bought up five cable companies and acquired GCN submarine capabilities and TC content. Plan or coincidence?

As far as I see it, the noise being generated over the LIME/Flow merger is just that — noise. I am certain that the regulators too will recognise it for what it is.

The reparations claim is still the perfect sideshow

It was recently reported that Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Member of Parliament (MP) Daryl Vaz and People’s National Party (PNP) MP Raymond Pryce had a clash of sorts in the House while Pryce was giving a presentation on reparations.

While I disagree with the comments made by Vaz about young Pryce, it occurred to me that Pryce has been bitten by Mike Henry’s bug — that elusive expectation that the taxpayers of Britain and other European nations will ask their tax population to either pony up heavily and pay us (not quite sure who the “us” is) many billions of dollars or, at the least, wipe the slate clean on our debt to members of the European Union.

It will not happen. Of course, it is too much of a passionate subject for politicians to ignore. The moral imperatives are quite sound and it inspires our orators to go off on long speeches, either to occupy time in the House or just to hear themselves talk and talk.

The Barbadian political scientist Hilbourne Watson explained it best. He said: “The historians and others at the forefront of the reparations discourse in the Caribbean completely overlook the fact that the entire history of all class societies dating back to the distant past is the history of exploitation, which has been bound up with the appropriation of the surplus labour by the class that owned the means of production. This relationship necessitated the use of force to compel the exploited to toil for them. This fact tells us that the producers of the wealth in those societies — slaves from antiquity, serfs, peasants and workers — could justifiably make a claim for reparations, equally with the descendants of enslaved Africans.”

I can appreciate that someone — like veteran JLP MP Mike Henry — wants to leave his mark on this country, not just as a politician and a minister, but as one who ‘struck the ground’ and made it shake, that is, a person who contributed in a way that made him larger than life.

I can well understand that young Pryce wants a piece of that too.

Hilbourne Watson also quoted Karl Marx: “Merchant’s capital, when it holds a position of dominance, stands everywhere for a system of robbery, so that its development among the trading nations of old and modern times is always directly connected with plundering, piracy, kidnapping slaves, and colonial conquest, as in Carthage, Rome, and later among the Venetians, Portuguese, Dutch, etc.” (Marx, Capital Volume III, 1971: 331).

The Barbadian political scientist makes a most cogent point that is curiously or conveniently missing from the Caribbean debate on reparations:

“The European ruling classes, which included landlords and the merchants (from the 15th century onwards) could not have carried out the project of enslaving Africans on such a wide scale, without the surplus labour (the wealth) that they had previously acquired from the exploitation of the population over which they ruled during the pre-capitalist era and the early capitalist period.

“Let us be very clear on this: Economic exploitation means that one class has acquired the means (ownership of the tools that produce the necessities of life) to live off the energy of another class. This is the scientific meaning of economic exploitation in the context of class society.

“Without this very basic understanding of the relationship between the ruling, dominant classes (the owners of the means of production whose material existence is based upon the expended energies of the direct producers), and the dominated classes (those who do not own the means of production), we inevitably get caught up in futile and pointless debates.

“The fact is that the European masses were also robbed of their surplus labour, which created the material conditions for enslaving the Africans. Does this fact not qualify the European working classes for reparations?”

Messrs Henry and Pryce, let me ask you this: Do the European working classes also have a case for claiming reparations?

Young Pryce, who seemed to have been so struck with his conversation with a member of British royalty and her acknowledgement of his presence and seeming endorsement of his little talk with her needs to know, as Watson so plainly states: “We would like to remind Sir Hilary and his associates that no class or group has ever successfully made its case for transforming the conditions of its existence by basing its appeal on moral suasion.”

You want the British to pay, Sir Pryce? Simple. Get an army and a navy and an air force and do what the British did when it despatched its forces in the early 1980s halfway across the world to protect its rights over the Falkland Islands and take it back, by force, from the generals in Argentina.

Do you have such a force, Sir Pryce?

observemark@gmail.com

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PRYCE…pro-reparations speaker

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VAZ… had a clash of sorts in the House with Pryce on reparations

Mike Henry

HENRY… wants to leave his mark on this country

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Capital, Volume III, by Karl Marx

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