Telecoms struggle
Dear Editor,
Recently, Minister Phillip Paulwell engaged the University of the West Indies (UWI) to conduct an islandwide survey on behalf of the Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy, and Mining to determine why the country fell in the global telecommunications ranking. Frankly, Jamaica will slide further in the ranking as prices go up, incomes go down, and a monopoly environment takes root again. It is not rocket science.
As a struggling UWI student living on a tight budget, I’m forced to be conscious of any slight movement in the prices of essential goods and services that I utilise. One essential service is that of the Internet, and for the past two years I have been a Flow customer. As such, upon hearing of the proposed merger with Cable & Wireless, I was somewhat uncertain, but I was willing to give the deal a chance on the basis that any economies of scale may redound to the benefit of the consumer. Such benefit, though, is dependent on honest and patriotic business ethics which would see a monopoly foregoing profit maximisation in the interest of maintaining prices at an acceptable level, particularly given our context as a relatively poor Third World country, where many of our people live below the poverty line.
We shouldn’t have to rely on the personal integrity of business operators to protect the interests of our people. We have a Government that the people have entrusted to secure and protect their interests. It seems more and more, though, that it is only the interest of a few that have been considered. No attempt was made to consult or inform the public beforehand on what this deal would really mean for the consumer; neither were we advised of the safeguards put in place to ensure that the consumer will not be placed at a disadvantage.
I very recently received notice of planned rate increases by Flow, which have been blamed on the sliding dollar, which has actually been relatively stable of late. One can only hope that this is not simply a slide down a slippery slope with no chance of recovery.
Somebody, please look out for us.
Denton James
Kingston 7
jamesdd14@outlook.com