The Fair Trading Commission (FTC) will hear submissions from the island’s main telecommunications providers during a special session to be held tomorrow, Friday, June 19.

Officials from the FTC will listen to presentations from representatives of TeleBarbados, Blue Communications Inc., Device Barbados Limited and Caritel, on the Consolidated Reference Interconnection Offer (RIO) which the Commission had requested from Cable and Wireless Barbados Limited (now LIME) for its review. ??The meeting will be held from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.

The RIO is a document which sets out the terms and conditions under which interconnection with any telecommunications provider will be approved by the Commission.?? In that report, matters relating to the technical feasibility of the physical connection; timelines; services to be provided; tariffs and procedures for interconnection will be examined.

At each phase of the telecommunications liberalisation, a RIO was developed for mobile, domestic, fixed wireless and international connections, in keeping with the increased numbers of service providers and new technologies entering the market.

Given this scenario, the FTC said a Consolidated RIO was more appropriate and conducted a public consultation notice from Monday, January 19, to Tuesday, March 10, to solicit comments and recommendations from the telecommunications providers and other interested parties.

The main items tabelled during the consultation were interconnection costs; Government’s policies on Two-Stage Dialing; equal access and indirect access which were issued on November 16, 2007; Access Deficit Charges (ADC), and changes to the language used in Incoming International Call Termination.

The meeting is open to the public.

jwilson@barbados.gov.bb

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