The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) placed the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) on a clock with respect to any response by the telecoms company to URCA’s preliminary finding of breach of contract: BTC now has less than a month to respond, 30 days after which URCA will issue its final determination and order. The matter stems from URCA’s investigation into the BTC March 2014 network outage. In a press release, the regulator explained that — in exercise of its powers under Section 9 of the Communications Act, 2009 — it launched an investigation into the network outage on March 22, 2014, in order to determine the appropriate regulatory or other measure it would take to effectively address this matter. After considering — among other things — the extent to which any failure by BTC to comply with a 2013 URCA ruling connected to a 2012 outage caused or contributed to the March 22, 2014 network outage, URCA made a preliminary finding that BTC breached Condition 3.3 and 27.1.1 (a) of its Individual Operating Licence. It did so, URCA said, by failing to comply with the 2013 ruling, and by failing to take all reasonably practicable steps to maintain, to the greatest extent possible, the proper and effective functioning of its public telephone network at all times. “As a result, on December 8, 2014, URCA issued a Preliminary Determination and Draft Order to BTC which sets outs URCA’s preliminary findings, prescribes regulatory measures to be imposed on BTC in order to rectify any breach and provides BTC the opportunity to present any representation or objections to such findings before URCA makes a final determination and order,” URCA said. “BTC now has until January 30, 2015 to respond URCA’s Preliminary Determination and Draft Order. URCA shall issue its Final Determination and Order within 30 calendar days of the date on which BTC’s representation and objections are due.”
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 19:12:27 +0000
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