Government itself is the biggest enemy of telecommunications development in Belize

The trouble with the BTL nationalization, is stagnation in the telecommunications industry. You need competition and with the government itself a stockholder, they are encouraged to try and keep it a monopoly. Thats the rub.

We need competition, the field is changing too fast. They need to drop the permit price to about $300 and say $5 per month per subscriber or something to allow competition. If it was BTL, their license fee would be 90,000 customers, or $450,000 per month. Smart say with 30,000 customers would pay $150,000 a month and some home entrepreneuer working out of his bedroom, with 5 customers in a village would pay $25 a month for his permit.

The forecast is in 20 years, that the computer will be in your blood stream activated by your brain. Minaturization is occuring so fast. The country needs to be on the cutting edge. The bottleneck is the BTL Headquarters building and the ARCO terminal. THAT needs to be seperated from BTL the telecommunications company. Do that, then all permit holders for INTERNET service providers would be able to develop latest technologies in an experimental basis and get in on the ground floor. Governments interest in BTL is holding that development back.

Right now, BOEING has produced their first ALL CARBON FIBER airliner. They have orders for 387 over the next few years. No aluminum skin, or frame. The mid size airliner now has the RANGE and POWER of the biggest ones. Due to strength and lightweight. Which translates into cheaper miles and fuel. That is progress and change and government ownership in BTL is guaranteed stagnation with outmoded technology. Owners of old factories always try to hang on to and protect their capital investment in an obsolete process, or factory. That is what happened to England.