File Photo

COMMISSIONER of Police Owen Ellington last night ordered the immediate arrest of the policemen involved in the beating and shooting death of a man in Buckfield, St Ann yesterday.

The police chief ordered the arrest of the men following the viewing of an amateur video which showed the man lying on the ground, appearing to be unarmed and subdued.

Commissioner Ellington has also instructed that stop orders be placed on the policemen involved at all ports of entry.

Ellington, according to a release from the constabulary, applauded the bravery of the citizen who brought this incident to public notice and has encouraged others who witness any act of police misconduct to do likewise, “as this provides the best opportunity for the police to rid the force of those members who would want to act outside of the law”.

“The entire JCF family deeply regrets this incident, and we want to apologise to the family of the person involved and all decent citizens of Jamaica. I will take every action necessary to prevent any future occurrence and I am asking citizens to be courageous, strong, and alert,” Ellington said.

Source: Observer

AP: Source Photo

WASHINGTON, USA (AFP) — US market regulators on Thursday accused two Texas businessmen in a huge insider trading scheme involving Cayman Islands trusts and companies, saying they reaped undisclosed gains of 550 million dollars.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges against brothers Samuel Wyly and Charles Wyly Jr. of Dallas, saying they violated federal securities laws governing ownership and trading of securities by corporate insiders.

The SEC said the brothers “reaped more than 550 million dollars in undisclosed gains while sitting on corporate boards by trading stock in those public companies through hidden entities located in foreign jurisdictions to conceal their ownership and trading of those securities.”

The agency said the brothers created an elaborate sham system of trusts and subsidiary companies in the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands to sell more than 750 million dollars worth of stock in four public companies for which they were corporate directors and committed an insider trading violation for an unlawful gain of more than 31.7 million dollars.

The SEC charged also their attorney Michael French of Dallas and their stockbroker Louis Schaufele of Dallas for their roles in the scheme.

“The cloak of secrecy has been lifted from the complex web of foreign structures used by the Wylys to evade the securities laws,” said Lorin Reisner, deputy SEC enforcement chief.

“They used these structures to conceal hundreds of millions of dollars of gains in violation of the disclosure requirements for corporate insiders.”

The SEC complaint said the scheme centered on publicly traded firms Michaels Stores Inc., Sterling Software Inc., Sterling Commerce Inc., and Scottish Annuity & Life Holdings Ltd.

According to the SEC’s complaint, the Wylys exploited their insider knowledge of Sterling Software in October 1999 to reap an illicit gain for 31.7 million dollars.

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands, Friday July 30, 2010 – A female judge in the Cayman Islands faces being kicked off the bench after the United Kingdom Privy Council ruled that her misconduct has made her no longer fit to serve.

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council recommended that Madam Justice Priya Levers be removed, more than two years after complaints of misbehavior were first made against her. The committee said the judge had made comments in court “which ranged from the inappropriate to the outrageous about those who appeared before her and to her own colleagues.”

The Governor of the Cayman Islands had appointed a tribunal in September 2008, to look into the complaints made against Justice Levers five months earlier. In August 2009, the tribunal advised the Governor to refer the matter to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and, after a four-day hearing last month, that body has given its advice.

“The Board is satisfied that by her misconduct Levers J showed that she was not fit to continue to serve as a Judge of the Grand Court and humbly advises Her Majesty that she should be removed from that office on the ground of her misbehavior,” it said on its website yesterday.

In its ruling, the Judicial Committee said that the judge has many admirable qualities: “She is a sound lawyer. She is industrious and she sets high standards. She had many admirers at the court,” it said, referring to witnesses who spoke highly of her.

But it said there were “fatal flaws” in her judicial career.

“Levers J has high standards and shows strong disapproval for those whom she does not consider measure up to them. That disapproval has extended both to some who have appeared in her court and to her own colleagues. Unfortunately, she has not kept that disapproval to herself. It has led her repeatedly to make in court comments that have ranged from the inappropriate to the outrageous about those who have appeared before her and, on two occasions, about her judicial colleagues,” the Judicial Committee noted.

“So far as those who appeared in her court were concerned, the disapproval and inappropriate comments in evidence before the Board appear to have been directed predominantly against women, and particularly women from outside the Cayman Islands,” it added.

The ruling identified one instance at a sentencing hearing in May 2007 in which the judge repeatedly interrupted the mitigation of a lawyer representing a man who admitted to causing serious bodily harm to his Jamaican girlfriend, to berate the woman in her absence.

Her comments and behaviour were so blatant, that the court reporter at the time drew it to the attention of the Chief Justice, writing that “despite the defendant pleading guilty, Justice Levers seemed to turn the focus of the proceedings on the female victim and seemed to indicate she had brought it on herself”.

“I had never seen anything like this in my 14 years of court reporting. In my opinion Justice Levers appears to have a problem with Jamaican women,” she wrote.

The Judicial Committee agreed.

“There was no justification whatsoever for this series of interventions, which flagrantly violated the Bangalore principles. They showed bias, and indeed contempt, for Jamaicans which extended not merely to the defendant but to his victim who, happily, was not in court. The comments about (the victim) were monstrous, suggesting that she should have been sent “home”, describing her as “a woman like that” and accusing her of “spreading her goodwill around” – a clear allegation of promiscuity,” it said.

However, the Judicial Committee insisted that “it would not be right to deduce from those instances any race or gender bias on the part of Levers J.”

It did say, though, that it agreed with the tribunal that the aforementioned incident constituted misbehaviour that would, of itself, have justified the judge’s removal.

Interestingly, the Sri Lankan-born Justice Levers married a Jamaican in 1977 and moved to Jamaica, where she practiced for 27 years. In 2002 she was invited to sit as an additional judge of the Grand Court and in the following year she applied successfully for a permanent appointment to that court.

Governor Duncan Taylor, who has the task of removing Justice Levers, is expected to make an announcement on the matter on his return to the Cayman Islands next Monday.

Source: Caribbean Net News

Source Photo: Dominica Online News

Marcia Baptiste, Miss Jaycees Caribbean Queen 2010, also won the Best Evening Wear Award and the title for the most environmentally-friendly contestant.

The first runner-up position went to Sangreena Harris, Ms. Anguilla, with Sudeakka Francis of St. Kitts & Nevis and Iva Christina Satney from St. Lucia placing 2nd runner-up and 3rd runner-up, respectively.

The Best Interview Award went to Miss Montserrat, Sherylene Dyer, while Miss Photogenic went to Trinidad & Tobago, Cherrese DeAbreau, and the Miss Congeniality Award went to Anguilla.

Source: Dominican Online News

There was plenty of room for the barkers in sandwich boards to make their way through the crowd at Lilith Fair’s tour stop this week at the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, N.J.

“Last call for $10 Maroon 5 tickets!” one shouted as he crossed the amphitheater’s sparsely populated lawn, his sign advertising deep discounts for a forthcoming show; regular-price tickets cost up to $65. But the fans at Lilith — a revival of Sarah McLachlan’s woman-centric package tour from the 1990s — weren’t buying.

For the concert business it has been a summer of hard sells and empty seats. Despite sellouts for Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and some other hot acts, overall sales have been suffering, with prominent tours like the Eagles and “American Idols Live!” canceling dates.

Live Nation Entertainment, the leading promoter, has been trying to fill seats with fire-sale prices, and in a recent presentation to analysts its executives promised that grosses in 2011 — when stars like U2 and Christina Aguilera are scheduled to make up shows they postponed this year — would improve.

But while superstar acts draw headlines, the fortunes of the wider business are just as reliant on the steady drawing power of a much longer list of midlevel performers. And interviews with fans at two summer concerts at New Jersey amphitheaters this week — Lilith, in Camden, and the Goo Goo Dolls, at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel — revealed some of the industry’s fundamental problems, including the basic head-scratcher of $10 tickets and $13 beers.

As with many of its shows this summer, Live Nation offered a range of discounts for the Goo Goo Dolls. In June it waived most (but not all) of the surcharges for its amphitheater seats. When large numbers of tickets were still left unsold, it began offering $10 tickets for shows on some Wednesdays. Those promotions are expected to continue, but some in the business question whether the pattern of high initial ticket prices falling to loss-leader levels in the days before a show is training some consumers to avoid full-price tickets altogether.

“How are we going to get people to buy tickets ahead of time next year when there’s so much deep discounting going on right now?” said Kevin Lyman, promoter of the Vans Warped Tour. “At the venues they’re hawking $10, $20 tickets, and you see the kids saying, ‘Wait, I paid $40 for that ticket.’ They’ve lost the trust of the fan.”

For big tours, most of the money earned through the base price of a ticket — before surcharges — goes to the artist. So Live Nation can afford to discount its tickets because it makes far more money through parking, food and other concessions, and through those fees. At the Goo Goo Dolls show, beers were $11 and $13.

In a survey of a few dozen fans, most were unaware of the ticket discounts. But Jay Milos, a corrections officer from Randolph, N.J., said he had made sure to wait for the right day to avoid paying a $12.50 fee on his $43.25 ticket.

“It’s a scam, the service charges and the fees,” Mr. Milos said. “It would be smarter for them if they always sold them without those fees and then supplemented their income with advertising on the site.”

Not everyone in the concert industry is seeing doom. Dennis Arfa, a veteran agent whose clients include Billy Joel, said that while there had been some problematic tours, plenty have been doing well. (Mr. Joel’s most recent tour with Elton John, for example, grossed $108 million for 42 concerts.)

“Yes, there are some tours not doing well; yes, there are bands that don’t belong out there,” Mr. Arfa said. “But as a whole, this happens every summer. Things aren’t as bleak and dismal as they appear to be, but the media falls in love with a story — everybody wants to shoot Goliath.”

Pollstar, an industry trade magazine that reports ticket grosses from promoters, said sales for the Top 100 tours were down by about 17 percent so far this year from the same period last year.

Attendance at the Goo Goo Dolls show was about 75 percent of the 16,000-person capacity. But at Lilith Fair, which has canceled 10 of its originally scheduled dates, the turnout appeared to be far lower, with about half of the inner theater’s seats and much of the lawn unoccupied (capacity is 25,000); Live Nation has not yet disclosed grosses or attendance figures for those shows.

The weak economy is widely cited as a likely cause of poor ticket sales; base ticket prices as high as $200 don’t help. But many agents, managers and promoters, as well as Wall Street analysts, also worry that an overcrowding of talent in the marketplace and extreme changes in pricing can alienate consumers in the long run.

For lawn tickets to the next Lilith Fair stop, at PNC Bank Arts Center on Saturday, for example, the regular price is $37.75. Live Nation was also offering a special deal of a pack of four lawn tickets for $75; with service charges they cost a total of $112.20. But on Wednesday, when the company’s latest sale took effect, those same four lawn tickets were $40 flat.

With record sales down by more than half over the last 10 years, artists have increasingly turned to touring for their income, leading many to tour too often, some say. That wasn’t the problem with the Goo Goo Dolls, who are on their first wide tour in three years, or with Lilith. But it is the case with many artists this summer. The band Creed, for example, is returning to many of the same amphitheaters where last summer it played to crowds as low as 27 percent capacity.

“The problem is that artists have been incentivized to tour more often, and they lost that scarcity factor that had been supporting ticket price increases,” said David C. Joyce, a media analyst with the firm Miller Tabak.

For Lilith Fair the problems may have more to do with a simple lack of demand. The lineup, which includes, at various points in the tour, the Indigo Girls, Cat Power, Suzanne Vega and Mary J. Blige, has been criticized as being too conservative. Kelly Clarkson, a major draw for younger fans, dropped out of the tour to work on a new album.

At the Susquehanna Bank Center, on a hill by the Delaware River that overlooks the skyline of Philadelphia, the lineup was particularly impoverished: besides Ms. McLachlan, the only other major headliner was the Court Yard Hounds, a Dixie Chicks side project.

Stacey Vey, who owns a bar in Philadelphia, looked over the light crowd at dusk.

“This is supposed to be one of those things you do this summer if you’re a lesbian in Philly,” she said. “You go to a Phillies game, you go to Lady Gaga, you go to Lilith Fair.”

Next to her, a friend, Elizabeth Pellerin, a homemaker in Medford, N.J., said the Lilith Fair tours in the ’90s were packed. She added: “You could say it’s the weather. However, it’s nice.”

Source: NY TIMES

ONE of the many differences between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, its closest neighbour, muses Jean-Max Bellerive, the stricken country’s prime minister, is that it has seen just two democratic handovers of power compared with a dozen next door. He is being tactful, since some of the Dominican Republic’s elections were far from fair. But his point is that organising a presidential election in Haiti this year will eventually be as important as giving food, shelter and jobs to the 1.5m people made homeless by January’s earthquake.

Haiti needs an effective and legitimate government if it is to rebuild itself—and if the outside world is to part with the cash it has promised the country. After a rousing show of unity at a donors’ conference in March, when Haiti was pledged $5.5 billion of aid, relations between the government and donors and charities have become increasingly strained. That has made a slow reconstruction effort still slower.

The scale of destruction in Haiti was so great that foreigners may have expected too much of the recovery. Pamela Cox, the World Bank’s top official for Latin America and the Caribbean, compares Port-au-Prince to European cities after the second world war. Yet over 1m people are still packed into 1,300 tent cities in and around the capital. The camps’ population is rising. Haitians who fled to the countryside after the disaster have returned in search of jobs and services. And soaring property prices—inevitable after the ruin of so much of the country’s housing—have put rents beyond the reach of most of the displaced.

Life in the tent cities is harsh. The state has little presence in them, and charities cater to only around a quarter of them. When rain is not flooding the ramshackle tents and tarps, the summer sun turns them into hothouses. General food distributions stopped in March. Work is scarce, and mostly limited to short-term jobs clearing rubble. Eventually the government hopes to convert Corail Cesselesse, its flagship resettlement camp, into a planned town, with schools, homes, and textile factories. Today it has little but tents. Over a quarter of them were washed away by a storm six months after the quake—a hint of the potential damage if this mild hurricane season turns violent.

Frustration and mistrust are growing. “We are functioning in two time frames,” says Leslie Voltaire, Haiti’s envoy to the un. “You have the internet time of the international community—they click and they want a response—and then you have the slow pace of Haitian time.”

Haitian officials complain that foreigners focus too much on the camps, and that displaced people will not move to new homes without work and services. They note that the government was weak before the quake and devastated afterwards: one-sixth of its staff died, virtually all its buildings were damaged, and its meagre tax revenues fell by 80%. Reconstruction takes money, and only a tiny fraction of the $5.3 billion in promised aid has materialised. The biggest solid pledge, a $1.15 billion commitment from America, has been held up in Congress. Much of the money may never arrive: based on the record following other disasters, Haitian officials expect to get just 15-20% of the pledged funds.

Yet critics counter that not everything requires money, and that the government’s inefficiency is hindering outsiders’ efforts to step into the breach. Charities’ staff gripe about delays in getting supplies through customs, which imposes costly storage fees and has forced them to spend a small fortune on car hire. Because the government has not yet decided where rubble should be disposed of, less than 5% of the more than 20m cubic metres of debris from the quake has been cleared. That has made getting around difficult.

The government has declared more than 100,000 buildings habitable, and said that nearly 60,000 more could be safely repaired. But Haitians are wary of official guarantees. There is no building code, much less any means of enforcing one.

Since very little Haitian land has clear title, much of the area around Port-au-Prince is now occupied by squatters who resist eviction. That makes it hard to find suitable sites for temporary portable shelters: less than a third of the 23,000 currently available have been erected. Even when they do go up, there is no system to allocate them. In the meantime, many of the homeless are holding out in the camps, hoping to be granted a bit of land with a shelter. “There are lots of people here whose houses weren’t destroyed,” says Jean-Michel Dorvil, a Corail resident, “but they can’t go back because they don’t have jobs and rents have gone up. Corail gives them something better: the opportunity to own your own home. Even if it’s a tiny house, it would be yours.”

Foreigners are getting impatient. Richard Lugar, an American senator, wrote last week that René Préval, Haiti’s president, had “demonstrated marginal capacity to lead his country’s reconstruction.” He added that Mr Préval’s “actions do not suggest a departure from the self-destructive political behaviour that has kept Haiti the poorest country in the hemisphere.”

All this has undermined the joint committee administering relief and rebuilding funds, co-chaired by Mr Bellerive and Bill Clinton, a former American president. It approved projects worth just $31m at its first meeting in June. And on July 16th it delayed its second gathering until August, when it hopes to start work in earnest.

November’s election offers a chance to put Haiti’s relations with its donors on a surer footing. Yet the vote itself has its own pitfalls. Only one machine is making the identity cards required to vote; numerous political parties are threatening to boycott the poll in protest of alleged corruption; and no clear front-runner has emerged. (Perhaps the best-known potential candidate is Wyclef Jean, a hip-hop star.) Outsiders’ desire for a new government may be impeding their willingness to work with the present lot. “I think they are waiting for the next president,” says Mr Voltaire. “But they shouldn’t be waiting, if they’re serious. They should be investing in studies and detailed projects now.”

Source: Economist

PARAMARIBO, Suriname — During an historic meeting here in Paramaribo, outgoing president of Suriname Ronald Venetiaan on Wednesday met with president-elect Desi Bouterse to discuss a smooth transfer of power on August 12.

For the first time in 18 years these two political rivals had a formal meeting. The last time was in 1992 when Venetiaan then in his first term as president of Suriname fired Bouterse, who at that time was the Commander of the Surinamese National Army.

The meeting Wednesday at the Office of the President was arranged by the Speaker of the House, Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, who recently discovered that there are no formal procedures and regulations how the transfer of power from one president to another should take place. Especially in this particular case involving the two most outspoken and bitter political adversaries in Suriname, the absence of such procedures was threatening to affect the smooth transition of power.

After the meeting both leaders disclosed that the talks took place in an amicable and constructive atmosphere.

“The talks were very fruitful and the president offered several tips how to act regarding certain issues,” president-elect Bouterse told reporters.

Meanwhile, his National Democratic Party issued a press release stating that the warm welcome that Venetiaan offered to Bouterse’s delegation set the tone for a firendly, frank and open discussion. Bouterse was accompanied by former president of Suriname and vice-president of the NDP, Jules Wijdenbosch and his spokesman Winston Lackin.

“The president was very cooperative and he gave very useful advise and numerous tips to the president-elect.” said Lackin.

During the meeting several issues, including national security, foreign policy, the state of the country’s finances and matters related to Bouterse’s inauguration were discussed.

President Venetiaan agreed to facilitate and share his experience regarding protocol, security, logistics and accomodation for heads of states, government leaders and other foreign dignitaries who will attend the inauguration.

“I am very pleased with this meeting which is a first step in a smooth and correct transition of power,” Speaker of the House, Geerlings-Simons told journalists.

She further disclosed that meanwhile parliament has mandated a commission to produce a bill concerning procedures and regulations for the transition of power in the future.

Source: Net News

“A deeper dialogue on all relevant trade issues, including the identification of opportunities for investment in Jamaica,” were among assurances that Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States, Audrey Marks, received from the U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Ron Kirk. Ambassador Kirk is a member of the Cabinet of the President of the United States of America, and is the Chief Advisor to the President on all trade issues.

Ambassador Marks was given these and other assurances of interest in intensified trade relations with Jamaica, as she paid a courtesy call on the U.S. Trade Representative earlier this week at his downtown Washington, D.C., offices.

In a 45-minute high-level discussion, the U.S. Trade official stated that based on his understanding, there was full protection of investor rights in Jamaica, and this should augur well for efforts to attract increased levels of investment into Jamaica.

Ambassador Kirk, a former mayor of the city of Dallas, Texas, expressed the view that the U.S. needed to become more engaged with the global partners. He said it was therefore important for the U.S. to pursue new markets and to directly engage with traditional stakeholders and partners, such as Jamaica, “to ensure continued growth and prosperity.”

As they reviewed a series of other important issues, the Trade Representative praised Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s vigorous measures to confront narco-trafficking and the related scourges of crime.

Noting the special relationship between the US and Jamaica, Ambassador Kirk said he looked forward to working closely on issues of common interest. According to Ambassador Kirk, “Jamaica is seen as a leader in the Caribbean,” and he expressed appreciation for the efforts of that country to conclude negotiations on the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) between CARICOM and the US.

Welcoming the signal of the interest in strengthening trade relations with Jamaica, Ambassador Marks outlined to the U.S. Trade Representative a number of steps taken by the Government of Jamaica to pursue economic growth, based on managing fiscal affairs by holding deficits within pre-determined parameters and establishing a fixed debt to GDP ratio. ” These policies, being pursued in partnership with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). have placed Jamaica on a path of sustainable economic and social development,” the Jamaican Ambassador told the U.S. official.

The Jamaican Ambassador, who assumed office some two months ago and presented credentials to United States President Barack Obama on June 28, has been focusing on strengthening Jamaica-US relations especially in terms of increased investment and trade opportunities, as well as deepening the links between Jamaica and its Diaspora.

Over the past few weeks she has also met with members of the U.S. Congress.

OR the second time in the life of her two-month-old Government, Prime Minister Kamla Persad- Bissessar immediately dispatched all of her MPs into their respective constituencies to assess the damage caused by yesterday’s flooding. This was disclosed by Works and Transport Minister Jack Warner at yesterday’s post-Cabinet news conference at the Office of the Prime Minister in St Clair at 2.30 pm. Before the start of the briefing, press secretary Garvin Nicholas expressed the Government’s gratitude to the small group of reporters who braved the flooding in Port-of- Spain to attend the conference.

“The Cabinet today decided that all the MPs should go to their constituencies immediately to work with their constituents to assess damages that is being done by the floods. You will see an absence of MPs in the building at the moment,” Warner stated. Looking at the seven reporters and three television cameramen in front of him, Warner added, “I am surprised you were able to come here.”

Shortly after the May 24 General Election, Persad-Bissessar instructed all 29 Partnership MPs to coordinate flood relief operations in their constituencies when several parts of the country were affected by severe flooding.

After stating that he directed his ministry’s Drainage Division to commence dredging of the Caparo and Cunupia Rivers, Warner revealed that Government plans to hire experts to advise it on how to deal with flooding. He further disclosed that a note will go to Cabinet next week to hire a TT national who is a specialist on flooding in Port-of-Spain.

Claiming this person has been “bypassed and neglected over the years” by the former government, Warner said, “The expert who I have recommended to Cabinet, his report I found here in the ministry.” Blowing on a document in front of him, Warner quipped, “All you need to do is dust, and you could, of course, easily have recommended it.”

Recalling there were previous initiatives to deal with flooding in Port-of-Spain, Warner said the difference with this expert’s report is that it has been internationally acclaimed and is relevant to addressing the flood challenges in this country.

Stating the construction of retention ponds and improving drainage were other elements of Government’s plans to tackle flooding, Warner was confident these measures would work despite the challenges posed by the heavy and consistent rainfall which the country has been experiencing.

Source: TT Newsday

Yog Mahadeo GT&T Chief Finan-cial Officer (Source Photo STABROECK)

Less than a month after the launch of its new US$30 million submarine cable facility, the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) disclosed that it has more than tripled sales of its Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service with the current number of broadband subscribers now up to 8,000.
Sales of the new service remain limited to Georgetown and the company says it is sticking to its incremental rollout plan announced several weeks ago.

Since the July 1 launch of the new submarine cable GT&T has also established strategic partnerships with private sector entities, which, it says, paves the way for significantly cheaper and enhanced consumer access to IT-related goods and services.

On the eve of yesterday’s official commissioning of the new cable system, the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Yog Mahadeo, who assumes duty as its Chief Executive Officer on Sunday and Director of Sales and Marketing Wyston Robertson provided a briefing on strategic business partnerships agreed with local entities and which have been made possible on account of the cheaper bandwidth now available via the new cable.

Some of the new partnerships, according to Mahadeo, are already a reality. At yesterday’s commissioning ceremony a partnership with the local IT service provider, Starr Computers to place a new, low-cost computer on the market was due to be announced. Mahadeo said that the initiative “will see our bandwidth coming together with that computer.” Yesterday, GT&T was also due to make public another strategic partnership with the local company Brainstreet aimed at the creation of a new virtual classroom.

“This particular initiative will put a worldwide library at our fingertips,” Mahadeo told the briefing. The company was also due to announce a further partnership that seeks to make significant volumes of data available for education in Guyana.

Meanwhile, Robertson told the briefing that GT&T detected “a sense of excitement” in the private sector over the prospects which the cable holds for the growth and expansion of the business sector. “We have been able to demonstrate the savings that the private sector will see in the price for bandwidth.” He said that while, previously, consumers would pay $50,000 for the company’s 512 KPSL service, they are now paying $33,000 for twice that capacity.

Robertson said GT&T is also seeking to establish partnerships with local commercial banks which would render their operations both more efficient and more profitable while ensuring some measure of return for their customers. Accordingly, GT&T will be seeking to offer banks cheaper bandwidth while seeking to have them “give back” through the creation of accessible loan schemes to help customers acquire personal computers and laptops for their children. “The availability of cheaper bandwidth now significantly opens up possibilities for enhancement of academia,” Robertson said.

Mahadeo told the briefing that the new submarine cable has satisfied the company’s expectations, meeting “all of the benchmarks that one would use to evaluate its performance.” He said the July launch had been intended specifically to provide the company with an opportunity to assess its performance. He disclosed that the company had received and was responding to “some complaints” from customers but those complaints were linked to the quality of the lines rather than to the performance of the cable. He said the company was confident that it possessed the technical capacity to manage “the new technology” which the cable represents, having invested in providing relevant training through both in-service programmes and overseas training in China, the United States and the Caribbean. “As technologies have evolved we have also followed up with training on all sides of the company including the engineering and data network sides and even on the basic DSL installs.

The moment we realized that July 1 was our launch date we had internal as well as overseas training sessions with our technicians,” Mahadeo said.

Robertson told the briefing that GT&T also bolstered the capacity of its Call Centre to respond to customer complaints about its new DSL service.

And according to Robertson the new cable’s capacity to provide effective redundancy was one of the critical benchmarks which, manifestly, had been met.

He disclosed that since the July 1 launch of the new submarine cable, the company experienced at least 12 outages on the old Americas 11 cable, pointing out that the presence of the new cable had saved the company the considerable criticism it otherwise would have had to face.

Meanwhile, the Marketing and Sales Director said GT&T wants the new cable to be seen as much more than an accomplishment for the company. “It is not just about GT&T. It is about every consumer understanding that they need to get on board; it is about software providers realizing that they need to provide applications that bring particular value to individuals; it is about every business understanding and taking advantage of the opportunities which the new cable affords.”

Source: STABROECK