THE EDITOR, SirWE WRITE with reference to your 'Letter of the Day' published in your December 19 edition under the headline, 'Facing up to Poor Performance' by Alexander Murphey. The letter is fraught with factual inaccuracies and unfounded assertions. We wish to state for the record that:
1. Contrary to popular belief, made more popular by numerous inaccurate repetitions in the media, Cable & Wireless Jamaica has never enjoyed a "guaranteed" rate of return for investing in Jamaica. The company, for several years, was permitted to earn between 17 1/2 to 20 per cent annually on its equity. There were several years when the company's profits fell below what was permitted.
2. The difficulties being experienced by Cable & Wireless in North America and other parts of Cable & Wireless Global have nothing to do with regulators having pressured the company into bringing 'its rates more in line with the global level.'
3. Cable & Wireless Jamaica has facilitated the expanded use of the Internet consistent with the terms of an agreement enshrined in the laws of Jamaica. In our view, only persons who would disregard both our laws and basic principles would interpret our insistence that other players in the industry abide by the same rules, as an abuse of dominant power.
4. The letter contains an expressed anxiety for the day when the Cable & Wireless licence expires. Apparently the writer is not aware that the process to end Cable & Wireless's exclusivity in the telecommunications industry began over two years ago and will culminate in March next year when there will be complete liberalisation of the telecommunications market in Jamaica. As a result of this the provision of domestic telecommunications services was liberalised in September 2001 almost 15 months ago.
The truth is that already there are several areas in the industry where competition is robust with the only component yet to be opened up being international voice services, and this will happen in March 2003.
5. The allegation that data processing companies are not able to afford the rates charged by Cable & Wireless (we imagine he means Jamaica Digiport, a member of our group of companies) confirms the lack of appreciation by the letter writer for expressing views based on facts. The Government of Jamaica has in place special dispensations designed to make these operations particularly attractive to investors in this field and our JDI continues to provide services to this sector at rates that are competitive with almost all such operations outside of the United States.
6. Probably the clearest display of Mr. Murphey's disregard for the facts is the assertion that cable companies have a more extensive network of cables than we do. It would be interesting to ascertain the source of this information.
Mr. Editor, obviously everyone is free to criticise our company and, where those criticisms are based in fact, we accept them and try to learn from them. We believe, however, that criticisms that are baseless and inaccurate should be relegated to other forums.
I am etc
ERROL K. MILLER
Head, Corporate Communications
Cable & Wireless Jamaica
