By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

and NATARIO MCKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

Cable Bahamas and the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) yesterday renewed their verbal war, this time over who was to blame for the delay in introducing number portability to this nation.

Immediately following the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority’s (URCA) announcement that the anticipated September 3, 2013, start date would no longer be met, Cable Bahamas accused its main competitor of being solely responsible.

Yet BTC “vehemently denied” its BISX-listed rival’s claims, instead attributing URCA’s move to “the technical condition” of the whole Bahamian fixed-line telecommunications market.

It added that Cable Bahamas “knows full well” why the regulator acted as it did.

Away from the verbal sparring, the delay is a temporary blow, at least, for Bahamian telecommunications consumers, who have suffered a further push back in their ability to enjoy greater choice and, potentially, improved services and prices.

Number portability is vital to fostering competition and choice in the Bahamian communications market, as it will allow consumers to keep their existing numbers when switching to another operator for fixed-line services only.

This will be especially valuable to Bahamian businesses, who will no longer fear losing business by having to change numbers, or spend time and money on informing customers of the switch.

Number portability will become available in locations where there is more than one fixed-line telephone services provider, such as Abaco, Eleuthera, Grand Bahama and New Providence.

However, URCA offered consumers little comfort as to when number portability would finally become a reality in the Bahamas, saying it would issue a final decision - and revised timetable - before September’s end.

In explaining the reasons for the delay, the regulator said: “Based on its latest technical reviews of operator readiness for fixed number portability implementation, URCA is not satisfied that consumers would at this time receive a seamless and satisfactory number porting experience.”

This prompted David Burrows, Cable Bahamas’ marketing head, to tell Tribune Business that both itself and the independent number portability administrator were ready to go for September 3, and only its main rival was not.

“Cable Bahamas is ready, the administrator is ready, but BTC is not ready,” Mr Burrows said. “BTC is half ready, and a partial roll-out is not an option because it will confuse the customer.”

He added that URCA’s reference to ‘operators’ in its release was not correct, as it was “an operator that is not ready”.

The inference behind Mr Burrows’ comments was that BTC, as the former incumbent still enjoying market dominance, is ‘foot dragging’ on number portability in a bid to delay the pace of market liberalisation and retain its still large fixed-line base.

“It’s critical to competition. It’s one of the cornerstones of liberalisation,” Mr Burrows told Tribune Business of number portability.

“The delay is just not good for competition, and anyone who wants to compete in the market for telephony, plus the consumer, of course.”

Marlon Johnson, BTC’s senior vice-president of marketing and communications, not surprisingly refuted Cable Bahamas’ allegations.

“Cable Bahamas knows full well the circumstances that will have led to URCA’s decision to postpone the introduction of number portability,” Mr Johnson told Tribune Business.

“They will have been party to the same conversations with URCA, and would understand where the condition of the market was from a technical standpoint, which led URCA to defer the introduction.

“We vehemently deny we weren’t ready. We were ready, consistent with the level of readiness we would have been communicating to URCA,” Mr Johnson added.

“But the regulator realised, prudently we believe, that to have maximum success for both carriers it was better to defer it. We reject the suggestion that delay was due to any one carrier, but broader considerations as outlined by URCA.”

Rejecting Cable Bahamas’ ‘anti-competitive’ jibe, Mr Johnson added: “We support a competitive marketplace, and the fact the vast majority of customers are still with BTC for telecommunications services speaks to the quality of our landline services and offerings, and we look forward to the further entrenchment of competition in the marketplace.”’

Stephen Bereaux, URCA’s director of policy and regulation, said the regulator wanted to ensure that fixed number portability was launched not only quickly but properly.

He told Tribune Business: “We are continuing to monitor very closely, and assess readiness and the testing that the operators are currently doing to ensure that they will be ready in the quickest possible space of time.

“To that end we anticipate that before we have to do our final determination, which will be due by the end of September, we would have a definitive date by which we expect number portability to be implemented on the networks to the standards that we want to achieve.

“We don’t expect it to be every far off. There is already testing and so it’s working to a limited extent. It’s a very finicky thing, and really what happens is it’s almost impossible to judge readiness until operators are in a position to test between their networks.”

He added: “We realised that things weren’t quite where we were hoping they would be, and we’re working to improve that. “It’s important that it is launched quickly, but it’s equally important that it is launched properly. What we are ensuring is that it is working properly.”

Mr Bereaux, while not wanting to be dragged into figure-pointing over which operator was primarily to blame for the delay, said: “Obviously there are some issues that have to be resolved, but the important thing is that operators are working together with URCA to get those issues resolved.”