Published On:Friday, September 03, 2010

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

The Bahamas Telecommunications Company's (BTC) interconnection has fallen well below international standards by "not meeting reliability of even 95 per cent", a competitor has charged, potentially placing its customers in danger if they have to call the emergency services.

Paul Hutton-Ashkenny, president of IndiGo Networks' parent company, Systems Resource Group (SRG), warned in a July 30, 2010, letter to the Utilities Regulation & Competition Authority (URCA) that with the reliability of interconnection between its network and BTC's "not good enough" for consumer use, it potentially could prevent its customers from calling the emergency services.

Currently, to access emergency services all Bahamas-based fixed-line phone users must connect via BTC's network, since it is the only one connected to the emergency services. Mr Hutton-Ashkenny's letter points out that given the relative unreliability of interconnection between its network and BTC's, its customers may be unable to call the emergency services during a 'life and death' situation.

"SRG can attest to the fact that BTC's interconnect does not even remotely meet the five nines (99.999 per cent uptime) international standard for reliability," the SRG president wrote.

"SRG's own experience over the course of the past 12 months is that BTC's interconnect has not met reliability of even 95 per cent, meaning that in the past 12 months there were over 18 full days when the interconnect with BTC was badly affected.

"With respect, this is not good enough for day-to-day consumer use between networks, let alone for consumer access to the emergency services."

While independent access to the emergency services network by every Bahamian telecoms operator would require a systems upgrade, Mr Hutton-Ashkenny said the cost of doing so needed to be weighed against "increased reliability for the consumer at times when such reliability is most needed".

Reliability

Speaking to Tribune Business yesterday, Mr Hutton Ashkenny said: "What I pointed out in the letter was that the general history of interconnection over the past 12 months has not been a very satisfactory one.

"From a general reliability perspective, there's been an awful lot of downtime the consumer is subjected to. It's not so much one event, but a number of events. Each had its own characteristics, and in totality they created a situation where, using any measurable yardstick for interconnection, it does not stack up."

He added: "All emergency operations have to go through BTC. If the interconnection is down, it's not a good thing for consumers. We have to make sure there is a mechanism in place that ensures interconnection with BTC is reliable, and in the past the experience has been that it is not sufficiently reliable. Interconnection has to be improved, or equipment that allows operators to connect directly must be used."

Referring to BTC's problems with its pre-paid and post-paid cellular system yesterday, Mr Hutton-Ashkenny said the state-owned incumbent "clearly had some systemic issues to address".

Interconnection is also key to successful liberalisation and competition in the Bahamian telecoms industry, as it allows calls originating on one firm's network to seamlessly transfer and reach a customer of another firm.

BTC has recently published its Reference Access Interconnection Offer (RAIO) on this issue and, while declining to go into specifics, Mr Hutton-Ashkenny said it contained certain things that SRG believed were "inappropriate".

Acknowledging that it was "human nature" for BTC to publish an offer that was favourable to itself, Mr Hutton-Ashkenny said: "But the offer needs to be favourable to all operators, not just BTC, and hopefully the upcoming public consultation will address that.

"There are some things in BTC's offering documents that we don't like, and don't think are appropriate."

A Tribune affiliate has a small stake in SRG.