The Bahamian people have been told lies and someone is still lying about Cable Bahamas’ involvement in the expensive use of signals from the facilities of the Broadcasting Corporation of The Bahamas.
What is the truth?
Did the cable company use the signals illegally or did it have authorisation from the BCB?
In September 2000, BCB General Manager Edwin Lightbourne said no. He said contrary to the “cooperative arrangement” that strictly limited Cable Bahamas to the transmission of TV 13’s signal and the sharing of facilities, resources and expertise, the cable company had connected items of equipment without the BCB’s knowledge or consent.
That equipment was used exclusively by Cable Bahamas to facilitate its Internet services and for the transmission of other data.
Following this discovery, the BCB disconnected the cable company’s equipment and it was determined that a fee of $700,000 had to be paid to have it reconnected. And while they wrangled over what other “appropriate compensation” would be determined, the cable company installed its own satellite equipment to provide Internet services.
The chairman of the BCB’s board was changed and nothing else was said about the matter οΎ— until now. Now the new chairman says the money has to be paid.
“They must not be allowed to get away with that,” said Calsey Johnson on a radio talk show this week. But that’s not the end of the story.
“We don’t owe them any money and we never owed them anything,” said Philip Keeping, chairman of Cable Bahamas. “They will take their course of action and so will we.”
However, that is not a new stance as Mr. Keeping said as much two years ago when he told ZNS management that after two years it should be ashamed to say it had no knowledge of what was happening.
Someone either lied then or is lying now.
It must be borne in mind that the Broadcasting Corporation’s signal was used to facilitate Cable Bahamas’ Internet services, a signal for which ZNS paid in excess of $1 million a year of taxpayers’ money, taken from the Public Treasury to fund the non-profit making corporation.
It must also be remembered that in a meeting with the BCB, the now past president and CEO of the cable company Richard Pardy, admitted that Cable Bahamas had been using BCB’s uplink to house and to transport carriers, of which the BCB was never informed.
The new chairman of the corporation is talking big. He says that the cable company will have to pay the money that is owed. The cable company says no. The next move is up to Calsey Johnson and the Broadcasting Corporation.
