PITA Newsletter
Fiji's Telecom War Not Over Yet
The road between monopolisation and deregulation is a rocky one. Case in point: Fiji where its telecommunications industry is facing vigorous hits, but lately unchallenged at least not in the courts, from a foreign company trying to establish roots in the country. Allegations made by Telpac boss Tim Gibbons that Fiji's sole domestic and international telecommunications providers, Telecom Fiji Ltd (TFL) and Fiji International Telecommunications Ltd (FINTEL) are deceiving local consumers of vital communications services and connected costs were met with subdued responses by the companies heads.
Gibbons, who some regard a thorn in the deregulation process, recently made a number of claims:
• That FINTEL is engaging in unethical rerouting of international bound emails;
• that TFL is gaining from an intentionally flawed billing system; and
• that Telecom's rates were high, to name a few.
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Responding to these claims, Lionel Yee, CEO of Amalgamated Telecom Holdings (ATH), the parent company of Telecom Fiji, said: "It's fair game for people to have a go at us." Yee refuted all accusations saying while the legal system is available for TFL to exercise its right should it become malicious, the company stands by its current level of telecommunications service provision. On the billing system, Yee admitted that while billing errors were inevitable they were not deliberate.
Gibbons had highlighted on a Fiji TV July screening of Close Up, a 1998 Telecom report showing an inconsistency in Telecom's billing system. Consumers have often expressed concern over telephone billing discrepancies through the local media. One only has to read the letters to the editor in the dailies.
Yee said: "Telecom has a big billing system and it has had billing problems caused by one thing or the other in particular where there's manual intervention of coding and so on. Also when a new software is introduced, sometimes there are bugs. It is company policy to fix this and if there are valid complaints we will investigate them. "There's no deliberate attempt to defraud consumers at all. We categorically refute that."
TFL boss Winston Thompson said the company had spent F$7 million last year to upgrade its billing system. Yee couldn't say though exactly how many complaints the domestic carrier received in a year only that complaints would be addressed if lodged. On cheaper rates, Yee noted that the industry was still a regulated one.
And as TFL and FINTEL still hold exclusive operating licences, there is limited scope for imagination on prices. The want for a free telecommunications environment, said Yee, is there but so is the law. Yee said: "The prices are controlled. The licenses are issued for both the domestic and international carriers so it's not a free, open competitive industry.
"We would like to move towards that and we're working with the regulator to get into a competitive industry. Also in doing that we have to level the playing field."
The rebalancing of tariffs is another concern making competition difficult because as Yee says, "the prices are distorted in favour of the line charges and the local calls are very low. We have got charts to show that the line charges in Fiji compared with Europe are a lot lower. We stand corrected if it's not the lowest in the world.
"How is it possible for us to run it this low? It's because it's cross subsidised by the high international charges, which is a subject of a lot of discussion. We admit that on the high international long toll calls it is a problem because on the world market that side has come down because of the extensive investment that went into the infrastructure during the Internet (explosion)."
The line rates on the world scale is some US$15 to US$20. Fiji currently sells lines for less than US$4, ten times lower than the OECD markets. Meanwhile, FINTEL general manager, Phil Richards refuted the claim that FINTEL routes email through the longest possible route. "There's no way we're going to misroute any traffic like that," Richards said.
"The only situation it might happen is on an overflow situation. If one route is full up than traffic overflows onto another route. But otherwise it goes direct to the address it's sent to. Yee said: "It's not necessarily the most direct route. It's the most economical and efficient route from the point of view of volume. The deregulated industry in the world works now on volume not necessarily distance."
For potential telecommunications operators hoping to set up business in Fiji, Yee said it would be ideal if these operators became full-service providers.
"They should provide the lines the farthest to Yasawa or the southern Lau like we do, so that we can connect onto their network at prices we're allowing them to connect to our network. That's fair competition."
