Caribbean Telecoms Future Unclear As Cable & Wireless Pulls Out Of St Lucia

Robert Lee, Tax-news.com, London

19 February 2001

Cable and Wireless' (C&W) domination of the Caribbean is well known and has not always been entirely welcome, yet in a shock move last week, the UK company announced that it was pulling out of St Lucia, leaving goverments in several Caribbean nations wondering about the future of telecommunications in the region.

C&W has long held a monopoly on telecommunications in the Caribbean. It controls telecommunications services in eight English-speaking Caribbean countries and has a 49 per cent stake in one other. But recently this monopoly has come under attack as several goverments began to make plain that they wanted the telecommunications sector opened up to competition. They say that C&W's domination is stifling both economic development and competition.

However, in a strange twist, C&W has said it will leave St Lucia at the end of March when its licences for cellular and international telecommunications expire. It put its decision down to the failure of negotiations over new licences between C&W and member states of the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL). C&W's office in Bermuda issued a statement which explained: 'Cable & Wireless is disappointed that its best efforts to resolve the issues in St. Lucia through negotiation have proved unsuccessful.' C&W said they were committed to the liberalisation of telecommunications in the Caribbean, but said that this should take place in a fair and orderly manner in order to ensure sustainable competition.

St Lucia's Prime Minister, Kenny Anthony, was due to discuss C&W's decision with his colleagues at a regional summit at the end of last week. C&W's announcement was generally unexpected, in spite of the fact that relations between the company and the regional goverments had been strained over the competition issue, although Petros Compton, attorney-general of St Lucia, said that the likelihood was always there: 'They wanted exclusivity and...we know the threat could have come from a big company, so we have been planning for that', he said.

Local newspaper Caribbean Week reported that there is genuine concern over C&W's impending withdrawal from St Lucia, and that the Ministry of Telecommunications hopes that the company will explore all options before definitively deciding to pull out.

C&W has said that its decision could be reversed, even though the company's exit is planned for next month. Errald Miller, C&W's chief executive officer for the Caribbean and Atlantic Islands, said: 'We have started the countdown for an orderly exit from St Lucia. Any countdown can be aborted, but we will need to have an idea what happens after April 1. We are ready to be engaged in discussions of this as soon as possible.'

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