PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Hun­dreds of peo­ple were turned away emp­ty-hand­ed yes­ter­day, af­ter the Blue Net­work’s well ad­ver­tised launch failed to ma­te­ri­alise at In­vaders Bay.

From as ear­ly 4 am, peo­ple con­verged at the site hop­ing to reg­is­ter for an event which ad­ver­tised smart phones and lap­tops for $1 for sign­ing up for the ser­vice.

By 9.30 am, both pedes­tri­an and ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic piled up along the ac­cess road run­ning in front of Movi­eTowne, which is called Hol­ly­wood Boule­vard, frus­trat­ing work­ers and vis­i­tors head­ed to the Mar­riott and ad­ja­cent build­ings.

The streams of peo­ple hop­ing to score on the ad­ver­tised deal were left won­der­ing if they would still get the items af­ter Blue Net­work mar­ket­ing man­ag­er Kieron Les Pierre’s an­nounce­ment that the planned launch, which had been card­ed for 10 am, would have to be halt­ed.

“Right now we are over­whelmed, if you can, we have per­sons there, per­sons came from 4 am this morn­ing wait­ing to sub­scribe to get their smart phones and lap­tops for $1. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we had been told by build­ing man­age­ment that we have to shut the event down for now,” Les Pierre said.

Guardian Me­dia learned that Blue Net­work had rent­ed space in the build­ing for what was said to be a board meet­ing as op­posed to a pub­lic reg­is­tra­tion. This left man­age­ment and se­cu­ri­ty be­wil­dered, as peo­ple came in waves to sign up for a net­work they hoped would spare them from the Bmo­bile-Dig­i­cel du­op­oly.

“We need com­pe­ti­tion in the coun­try, Bmo­bile is over­charg­ing the cus­tomer. Dig­i­cel be­came like Bmo­bile, so when we have a third com­peti­tor, the rates would be more com­pet­i­tive and we will get bet­ter ser­vice for mon­ey,” Champs Fleurs res­i­dent Re­bec­ca Ranger told Guardian Me­dia.

By mid-morn­ing, how­ev­er, po­ten­tial cus­tomers were all turned away dis­ap­point­ed, leav­ing a bit­ter taste in the mouths of some, with many ques­tion­ing if there was ever go­ing to be such a launch at all.

“You all are liars! It nev­er had a launch!” said one woman an­gri­ly, af­ter she and her young child were turned away by a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer.

That of­fi­cer, for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od, was the on­ly source of in­for­ma­tion for mem­bers of the pub­lic, as Blue Net­work mem­bers, in­clud­ing La Pierre, spent the rest of the morn­ing in meet­ings away from the pub­lic.

“Dis­ap­point­ing would be an un­der­state­ment for a lack of a bet­ter way of say­ing it, be­cause it was a big launch where they in­vit­ed as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble and then we peo­ple come to the lo­ca­tion, and they said the hours from 10 to 4 and by half 10/11 I hear­ing every­thing is done,” said Quasey Jack­son of Bon Air Gar­dens.

He, how­ev­er, was hope­ful they would get their act to­geth­er and pro­vide more in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic about their ser­vices.

But the con­fu­sion was not on­ly shared by the wait­ing pub­lic, as it ex­tend­ed to Blue’s peers on the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions land­scape.

TSTT sub­se­quent­ly sub­mit­ted a let­ter to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T, ask­ing if Blue had been grant­ed a li­cence to op­er­ate a mo­bile net­work, while TATT dis­patched a team to meet the com­pa­ny’s of­fi­cials at the venue.

That meet­ing, ac­cord­ing to one Blue team mem­ber, made the group feel “like the most want­ed peo­ple in Trinidad,” as TATT and of­fi­cers from the TTPS asked them about their op­er­a­tions.

TATT CEO Cyn­thia Red­dock-Downes lat­er con­firmed that Blue had not ap­plied to op­er­ate as a mo­bile op­er­a­tion.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, TATT said, “There is no new mo­bile net­work in the coun­try.”

TATT point­ed out that a “po­ten­tial op­er­a­tor wish­ing to op­er­ate a pub­lic telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work, must ap­ply for, be ap­proved and be grant­ed a con­ces­sion to op­er­ate a net­work.”

TATT added, “No ap­pli­ca­tion has been made nor a con­ces­sion grant­ed to any po­ten­tial “new” op­er­a­tor that was sched­uled to launch to­day (Fri­day).”

TATT con­firmed a le­gal team and its telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­spec­tors vis­it­ed the Blue team at In­vaders Bay. It said based on its in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the Blue Net­work is not pro­vid­ing a pub­lic telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice or net­work.

Blue, how­ev­er, de­nied it was a mo­bile vir­tu­al net­work op­er­a­tor, and in a re­lease of its own, said fol­low­ing its meet­ing with TATT, it had per­mis­sion to op­er­ate once it re­moved the word mo­bile from its name.

Blue, on its so­cial me­dia page, al­so sought to ad­dress sev­er­al ru­mours which sur­faced dur­ing the launch, as it con­firmed the com­pa­ny was not af­fil­i­at­ed with the Elon Musk owned Star­link.

In­ci­den­tal­ly, Star­link had been grant­ed a con­ces­sion li­cence from the Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Min­istry to pro­vide in­ter­net ser­vices last month but has yet to an­nounce its of­fi­cial launch date in T&T.

La Pierre, in an­oth­er so­cial me­dia post, al­so said while the com­pa­ny was util­is­ing a so­cial me­dia page for­mer­ly op­er­at­ed by the GRAPES Group, it is not a part of that com­pa­ny.

The com­pa­ny GRAPES For A Good Life Ltd pro­vid­ed low-cost lap­tops to cus­tomers but over time, the lev­el of their ser­vice was pub­licly ques­tioned and the com­pa­ny has since been em­broiled in a le­gal mat­ter.