Mary King
The acquisition of the assets of Columbus Telecoms by Cable and Wireless Communications (CWC) puts the latter in a very competitive position as far as infrastructure in the region. The impact in T&T depends on what is done about the CWC shareholding in TSTT and the award of the new mobile licence locally.
After an analysis of the income/profit of CWC and Columbus in the region, one commentator in the Business Guardian is recommending that we (NEL) as owners of 51 per cent of TSTT, share in these profits by investing this asset into an enlarged CWC/Columbus/TSTT conglomerate whereby we would also benefit from jobs offered in T&T.
Put directly, our economic future as a country, as a telecommunications provider, would be limited to a portfolio investment in CWC from which we earn dividends and benefit from traditional operation jobs. The question surely arises, is this the best we can do with this economic asset, 51 per cent of TSTT?
To do justice to this question, it is useful to look at what economic development is about and, as an example, take a look at the emerging concept of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). An economic transaction is the investment/use of a resource/asset to produce other resources/assets. Economic development is about producing more productive assets/resources by the use of the current resource/asset. Hence it is possible to get economic growth without economic development by poor investment choices.
Some developing countries used rents from the exploitation of their commodities to build SWFs, the proceeds of which they invest in assets in the developed countries, earning dividends.
Many are coming to the realisation that this is not economic development either of themselves or the rest of the developing world. Therefore, there is a move towards investing in their own countries and the developing world to create infrastructure, assets, resources that increase the economic productivity of the original resource of the countries.
In a sense our own 51 per cent shareholding in TSTT is akin to a SWF which should be used in our own development, ie creating an asset that is more economic productive than simply earning dividends and or providing operation jobs.
It is now taken for granted that we need to use our resources/assets to build an asset that can generate on-shore development and the currently accepted way is via knowledge, innovation driven competitive advantage. Hence our economic transactions should include inter-linkages with others that are so inclined.
Note: BT's R&D centre at Adastral Pk UK is world renowned. CWC and Columbus are simply purchasers of technology, and the new conglomerate appears to be at Porter's wealth driven stage where competitive advantage is not about innovation but about acquisition of the competition. Clearly, joining the CWC/Columbus conglomerate may deliver dividends but it is not about economic development, it is not about creating national competitive advantage.
Every government that speaks on our economic diversification refers to the opportunities that ICT offers for creating innovative SMEs, but stops short of explaining how. Instead the intergovernmental consortium of the University of Illinois and the US cities of Urbana and Champaign are building and operating an open-access fibre optic network that connects the anchor institutions of the communities and to households in the neighbourhoods.
This will allow improved access/support to healthcare, educational and recreational institutions, public safety and governmental agencies, and social services/religious organisations as well as increased access to public computing centres.
For four years, we have been giving laptops to students with no network or content infrastructure. For many years, we had been talking about inter-networking our hospitals. For years, our public safety systems have been based on low tech CCTV cameras with nothing really to show as successes, partly because the required big broadband facilities are not there.
Private sector mobile competition will not provide these services. Should we not invest the 51 per cent asset in TSTT into building a big broadband open access service which can challenge our innovative SMEs to provide these competitive services, to create economic development?