The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL kvirgil@tribunemedia.net CRIMINAL attorney Wayne Munroe yesterday said the Bahamas Telecommunications Company should be penalised for the numerous disruptions to service for thousands of Bahamian customers. BTC with its 249,00 prepaid and 47,000 post paid customers was privatised in April 2011. Since then Mr Munroe said the company has not delivered on its promise of improved services. He said: "We the Bahamian people, have been receiving worse service than before the sale (of BTC). It has been clear from the first day after the sale that the focus of the new majority owners has been the maximisation of profits. While this has been happening the regulator URCA has done nothing to protect the interest of the Bahamian people. URCA should be the ones to regulate BTC since it is a monopoly." It is now imperative, Mr Munroe said, that URCA mimic the practices of other jurisdictions that are serious about disincentivising telecommunications companies who perform "as poorly" as BTC has. "Regulators in other places are constantly coming down on telecommunications companies who do not honour their agreements on what they said they would deliver as far as service is concerned. Those regulators order them to pay penalties for every time there is a breach of contract." "We need to have the same happen to BTC, I believe a move of that magnitude would cause these kinds of instances to become significantly less. If these events had a financial impact it is likely that we would have far fewer of them." "This is one of the areas that an Ombudsman is desperately needed. We must do something about this," Mr Munroe said. He added that yesterday's BTC "blackout" that did not see services restored until late in the afternoon was "the straw that broke the camel's back". This latest mishap could trigger a class action suit against the company, Mr Munroe said. "I have had enough and I have instructed counsel and legal interns in my firm to draft correspondence to make a demand on BTC on my behalf and on behalf of other clients who have complained for compensation for these breaches of the service contract." If URCA will not act in the interest of the Bahamian public, Mr Munroe said he will petition the court to impose a financial incentive for customers in hopes of forcing BTC to provide better services. The attorney also noted that he cannot be satisfied with BTC's sporadic notifications of forthcoming service interruptions. "Notification that you are going to break your contract does not excuse the breaking to your contract. "If I notified BTC in advance that I was not going to pay my bill because things run a little bit low that month they will still disconnect my phone," Mr Munroe said.