Joint Diplomatic Representation

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Telecommunications is the sharing of communications over a distance. The revolution in information technology and communications, which began in the closing decades of the 20th century, has turned the field of telecommunications into a huge global industry that has impacted every country in the world having changed businesses and lifestyles everywhere. With today’s technologies, time and distance are no longer barriers to speedy communication. Perhaps, the most powerful symbols of the telecommunications revolution are the Internet and the mobile telephone. As telecommunications changed and expanded rapidly and became increasingly vital to economic development, governments around the world found it necessary to regulate the industry to enable fair and full competition and to protect the interests of the public. The governments of the Eastern Caribbean countries were no exception.

In 1998, a World Bank review of the telecommunications industry in the seven Protocol Member States of the OECS showed the sector was dominated by a single company that possessed a virtual monopoly for the provision of telecommunication services. Consequently, the high prices consumers paid for these services were not based on actual costs and generated excessive profits for the company. It found that the quality of service was often well below the expected average and with outdated laws it was difficult for new service providers to enter the market. Regulation of the industry was managed by different government departments in each country which were inadequately staffed for the tasks they needed to perform.

Five members of the OECS – Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with the assistance of the World Bank, decided to join to reform their respective telecommunications sector. On 4 May 2000 they signed an agreement establishing the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL) – a regional body empowered to provide legal and technical advice to the governments on all areas of telecommunications. It was a unique achievement since, for the first time, governments were ceding some regulation of the telecommunications industry to a regional organisation. ECTEL sets policy and guides the management and development of the telecommunications industry in the participating Member States. With the advent of ECTEL, the monopoly in the Eastern Caribbean telecommunications industry was broken as new companies were allowed entry into the market; consumers in the participating Member States gained better choices and prices, as well as greater access to telecommunication services. The number of internet and mobile phone users increased steeply in all ECTEL countries during the first five years after deregulation while the fees for international telephone calls declined just as sharply.

Teacher’s Resource Book

According to a study on the history of ECTEL by Edgardo Favaro, in Dominica for example, from 2000-2004, the number of internet users increased by 208 percent, the number of mobile phone subscribers per 1000, jumped by 3,341.2 percent while in Saint Lucia that number went up by 3,450.0 percent. In addition to its positive impact on consumers, ECTEL has again demonstrated the benefit of regional integration for the Eastern Caribbean States for it brought together and utilised a talented pool of technical experts which each Member State would have found impossible to acquire on its own. ECTEL has therefore revolutionised the telecommunications industry in the Eastern Caribbean. ECTEL consists of a Council of Ministers, a Board of Directors and national telecommunications regulatory commissions in ECTEL countries.

The ECTEL Secretariat is based in Saint Lucia and is headed by a Managing Director. It is funded from license and spectrum fees.

Notes

1. Small States, Smart Solutions: Improving Connectivity and Increasing the Effectiveness of Public Services, Edgardo Favaro, World Bank

Publications, 2008

KEY WORDS FOR FURTHER REFERENCE

▪ Biodiversity ▪ Ecosystems ▪ ICAO ▪ ST. GEORGE’S DECLARATION ▪ Sustainable Development

TOWARDS THE FUTURE

The leaders of the governments of the seven Eastern Caribbean States who first embarked on the journey of the regional integration of their islands in 1967, began with a modest building block – an informal council by which they met to plan and advance their goal of a united Eastern Caribbean. Over five decades, they and other generations of leaders, public service officials, and citizens continued to build on the advances made; and an informal institution grew into a formal regional organisation encompassing cooperation in a variety of important functional areas fuelled by the desire for full economic integration.

The functional integration which the OECS provided has been successful because it has brought tangible benefits to both the people and the governments of the OECS. It is this success that led to the further deepening of regional integration through the creation of the Economic Union in 2010. It is now the task of a new generation of leaders and people of the Eastern Caribbean to work towards the full implementation of the Economic Union Protocol so that its promises of social and economic development and environmental stability for the benefit of the people of the Eastern Caribbean can be realised.

The admission of the French Departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe into the OECS was as pivotal for the integration process as was the adoption of the Economic Union Protocol of the Revised Treaty of Basseterre. Their membership widened the Eastern Caribbean regional integration movement in a direction that had not been foreseen by its founders – the inclusion of non-English speaking Caribbean islands which are formally part of a metropolitan country – France. The Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, in his speech on the occasion of the admission of Guadeloupe into the OECS in March 2019 stated that its membership and that of Martinique in the OECS represented “the maturation of the OECS”. The OECS had matured because it decided to pursue the difficult enterprise of simultaneously deepening (through economic union) and broadening (through French Caribbean membership) Eastern Caribbean integration. Can this be successfully accomplished? Should it have been undertaken at that juncture, particularly as it is being regarded as containing profound implications not only for the OECS but also for the larger Caribbean integration movement itself?

According to Dr. Gonsalves:

“Before our very eyes, the regional integration movement is being transformed with the entry of both Martinique and Guadeloupe as Associate Members of the OECS. Is Barbados next? What about French St. Martin and the territories which are called “the Dutch Antilles”? Is there emerging an enlarged south-eastern and northeastern pole of regional integration? How would Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Barbados react to all this in any reordering of regional integration? Would there be a reconfiguring of CARICOM itself with the emergence of a north-western integrated pole of Jamaica, the Bahamas, Haiti, and perhaps the Dominican Republic - and in time, Cuba and Puerto Rico? Would the altered, and altering, global political economy, its knock-on regional reverberations, and regional homegrown alterations demand a reordering of the regional integration movement to accommodate a flexible variable geometry of integration as the circumstances admit?

Teacher’s Resource Book

…..Our Caribbean experience teaches that concentric circles of integration are permissible and practical, each complementing or supplementing one another with their relevant points of contact, joinder, or association. Is the evolving OECS a path-breaker or harbinger for the future in this regard... The maturation of the OECS embraces practically the variable geometry of integration as made manifest in its welcoming of Martinique and Guadeloupe to associate membership.” Whatever the variation in the course of regional integration by the OECS, its fundamental goal has to remain “the closer union of the peoples of the Eastern Caribbean” as was first stated in the Preamble of the 1968 ECCM Agreement and reaffirmed in the Preamble of the Economic Union Protocol to the Revised Treaty of Basseterre. The lessons of the preceding decades are that this can be accomplished; the foundations have been firmly set; and that by continuing to build together, the full union of the Eastern Caribbean can be achieved for the good of all and to the disadvantage of none.