Digicel Guyana is considering becoming a full service provider when the nation’s telecoms markets are fully liberalised, and has unveiled plans to introduce fixed broadband and telephony services. Demerara Waves quotes the cellco’s CEO, Kevin Kelly, as saying: ‘With liberalisation, we will have cheaper international calling, we’ll have cheaper internet to home, we’ll possibly look at landline, we will bring in a submarine fibre cable. We’ll basically become a total telecommunication company.’ Fixed line incumbent Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT) currently holds a monopoly on the provision of fixed voice services and international voice and data transmission, but this is expected to change in the near future with the passing of long-awaited reforms.
GTT has expressed concerns over potential imbalances in competition that may accompany Digicel’s entry to the fixed market, however, warning that if Digicel was not required to provide services in low revenue areas, it would push to be released from its commitments to serve ‘revenue unattractive areas.’ GTT’s chief commercial officer commented: ‘For GTT it’s very important to have a level playing field…because it cannot be the case that we have to provide landlines, for example, in Essequibo or somewhere in the interior where[as] the competitor can piggyback on the higher growth income [area] here in Georgetown and do the easy stuff first.’