The Chairperson of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), Attorney-at-Law, Dela Britton has announced that by July of this year, cell-phone customers will be able to retain their mobile numbers even after switching service providers. She said the Public Utilities Commission is moving to implement Mobile Number Portability.
Ms Britton made the announcement during a webinar hosted by the PUC today under the theme – ‘Telecoms Sector in Guyana; Navigating this New Frontier.’
“PUC has the statutory mandate to implement number portability in Guyana. Number portability is a game changer in the competition space, as it allows consumers to retain their existing telephone or cellular numbers when switching providers,” the PUC Chairman explained.
Britton said the PUC is eagerly awaiting the testing phase to be completed, and anticipates that number portability will become a reality in Guyana in July, 2023.
Faced with increasing competition, players in the Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) sector, will be forced to improve on their service offerings, the PUC Chair reasoned.
She said since the liberalization of the telecommunications sector in 2020, the sector has become even more competitive with some 745,689 mobile subscribers registered.
Additionally, there are, 97,170 landline subscribers and 123,866 Internet subscribers, according to the PUC statistical data.
“The Commission commends the operators on the significant strides made in true spirit of competition to deploy fixed internet and long-term evolution services to consumers along Guyana’s coastland and outlying areas. As a positive consequence of competition, there has been a steady decline in complaints in the mobile service category, and it may be posited that this is a direct result of the overall upgrade of existing networks and new technologies, which in turn has led to improved performance and better quality of service,” Britton said.
For its part, the PUC has been retooling its operations to meet the everchanging demands of both the operators and local decerning customers as new products are introduced.
Cognizant of the importance of the elimination of barriers to a fair and competitive environment, and in keeping with the spirit and intent of a liberalized sector, the PUC has moved to adjust the termination rate downward.
Director of Telecommunications Agency, Andre Griffith, who was among the panellists, said globally, fixed lines subscription has been on the decline.
“Obviously, when you look at fixed lines subscription which is the oldest technology that’s around, we are seeing, similar to everywhere else in the world, we’re seeing a decline in that and I think that is to be expected so that’s your old landline technology. We’re seeing strong growth…of you look at the trends going back to 2018, we’ve got some insight, 2018 coming forward to 2022, and we’ve seen a significant bump, significant uptick in mobile subscriptions. We’ve seen an uptick in fixed and mobile broadband,” Griffith said.
Digicel Guyana Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Gregory Dean said the cellular communication giant has been capitalizing on the liberalization of the sector, and come next year will land a subsea fibre as it expands its operation.
“We’ve been able to enter into new segments of the sector with certainty. So, we have our fixed broadband. So, it’s something we’re pursuing. Obviously, as everyone knows, we’re also planning to land our own subsea fibre to you know, underpin those expansions. So, we were expecting our subsea fibre to arrive early next year but certainly driving the rollout of fixed broadband is something we’re interested in and we’ve started that journey. I think everyone knows from our experience in terms of the mobile side of it, you know, we have no reservation in terms of expanding services across Guyana,” Dean said.
Guyana Consumers Association Consultant, Yog Mahadeo, however, expressed concern that in Guyana a lot of time is spent on patching up the past, while the rest of the world is well advanced.
He said while the country’s service providers are fixing the gaps of the past, Artificial Intelligence is taking over the rest of the work.
ENET Chief Executive Officer, Vishok Persaud and GTT’s Deputy Executive Officer, Richard Stanton also participated in the discussions.
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