The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

THE Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) came into existence on September 1, 2009. URCA replaced the Public Utilities Commission and the Television Regulatory Authority. URCA is supposed to act as an independent body and its main purpose is to regulate the telecommunications industry.

On its website, when clicking on the consumer section, there are five main points that URCA is supposed to ensure that competitors in the telecommunications industry execute to protect consumers. These are listed below:

• Ensuring that the quality of your utility services are satisfactory;

• Ensuring that prices for utility services are reasonable;

• Promoting and protecting your interest;

• Promoting competition in the utility sectors;

• Publishing reports on the utility sectors;

I ask the question then: What is URCA doing to ensure that the consumers of cellular services receive satisfactory service? BTC's announcement that they are upgrading their network and that there are going to be outages is not good enough. Certainly, URCA has a much bigger role to play, but as they are supposed to be an independent body, why aren't they publicly coming to the defence of the consumer?

Friday, June 15, 2012 was another day in which many businesses lost thousands of dollars because cellular services were disrupted. This in my view is unacceptable. Where is the redundancy in BTC's network? Shouldn't capabilities exist so that when the primary system is down, that the secondary system is booted up to handle all the network traffic?

If these capabilities do not exist now, I hope URCA has demanded that BTC put these systems in place for future upgrades. We had a horrific experience with the New Providence Road Improvement Project (NPRIP) and now the upgrades at BTC are proving to be moving along the same trend. These examples are certainly not the best way to execute projects.

Maybe BTC and the decision makers of the NPRIP can look at the execution of the Nassau Airport Development Company (NAD). They are rebuilding the Sir Lynden Pindling Airport, but the airport has remained open and is still providing its core service which is to ensure that consumers depart and return to the airport safely.

Bahamians now know better and these companies that take the unpopular approach to projects without carefully considering the negative effects to its consumers had better get on with it and rethink their strategies. I say to URCA that BTC's outages are planned and the question to ask is why these planned outages can't be completed between midnight and 6am.

I say to URCA, that "independent body" to please regulate and protect the consumers.

DEHAVILLAND MOSS

Nassau,

June 20, 2012.