Jacqueline A. Morris

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Telecommunications and Choice in Trinidad and Tobago

So - the local monopoly telecomms company, TSTT, has decided to offer a "SmartChoice" package to the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. This is supposed to reduce our bills, by moving to per-minute billing (that the law has refused to allow them to do), giving us "bundled" minutes and discounts on ADSL packages, and very low international call rates. However, they have not included calls to OTHER ISP's POPs in the bundled minutes. So, from 23cents to check your email or surf, it becomes 20 cents PER MINUTE if you are with an ISP that is not TSTT. Hmmm... does this sound like illegal competition? Seems to me that they are creating an incentive for customers of other ISPs to switch - inducing them with low international calls, cheaper calls to cell phones and discounts on other services. But the other ISPs cannot compete - how can they? They have to get the local lines from TSTT. They have no choice. Not a Smart choice nor a Stupid choice. Now - the Smart Choice package is really good for some people. But for the others, it is a really bad choice indeed.

1 Comments:

  • thats true...I'm one of the people that love the idea of it just 4 the international calls....I don't like how they are charging the cell phone calls....and another thing they are removing TDMA phones I haven't heard anything about compensation to those TDMA costomers...ahhh well at least they opened up the market 4 new phone companies.

    By Åñèè§å, at 6/04/2005 03:03:00 PM  

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