US$35M cable from Brazil a convenience for Jagdeo’s friends

Mar 19, 2013 News

–   E-Networks teamed up with Huawei on WiMax service
–   Then Huawei gets US$35million cable contract
–   Brian Yong, E-Networks are beneficiaries of cable

The recent exposure of the way in which broadcast licences were issued shows how former President Bharrat Jagdeo may have created a special clique of his friends and associates to benefit from massive projects being funded by the Guyanese taxpayers.
More questions are now being raised about why Jagdeo secretly rushed to sign a US$35 million deal with Chinese company Huawei to bring a wireless cable from Brazil.

Bharrat Jagdeo

Now it seems that the cable deal was brought into the picture to make it nice and easy for Jagdeo’s friends to control the national spectrum.
Jagdeo granted two persons cable licences on the 2.5 GHz band in December 2010. These were E-Networks, under Vishok Persaud, the son of Reepu Daman Persaud, a stalwart of the ruling People’s Progressive Party, and Brian Yong, who Jagdeo invited to mount the PPP’s platform in the 2006 elections.
The services offered by the two men, such as 4G, require both the availability of licenced airwaves – also called spectrum – from the government, and considerable private investment in infrastructure.
In early December 2010, Persaud introduced his company’s WiMax 4G Network. He launched the service the very month that he was granted a licence, indicating that he set up his technology with the assurance that he would be licenced.
The same goes for Brian Yong, who started putting his infrastructure in place and waited to be handed his licence on a platter in December 2010.
The story becomes even more interesting when considering that Persaud’s company, E-Networks, teamed up with Huawei of China to provide the WiMax network.
Huawei is the same company which Jagdeo’s government granted the US$35 million contract to build a wireless system to provide a range of so-called e-governance services. There was no formal announcement of the signing and neither were details of that project made available.
In fact, Jagdeo announced the Huawei contract at the launching of Persaud’s WiMax service.

Brian Yong

Jagdeo said that the system being built by the Chinese would hook up hospitals, police stations, military outposts and other facilities.
That brings the story back to Brian Yong, who said that his company would provide Guyanese Internet access for educational, commercial, and medical purposes – the same objectives of the government’s planned use of the US$35milion wireless cable system.
“This will allow us to move fully into E Government mode, hooking up our schools, our hospitals and everything else so that we can deploy technology to the service of our people,” Jagdeo said at the launching of the E-Networks WiMax service.
The former President had said there will be enough bandwidth to deploy different kinds of wireless technologies.
Through the use of the WiMAX technology, Jagdeo was optimistic that Guyana’s level of competitiveness and efficiency in health, education, agriculture and manufacturing will improve significantly.
There were objections of ulterior motives on the part of the Jagdeo Government for spending money on a service which could be offered by the Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company, which had launched a high-speed Internet service through a US$60 million fiber-optic cable network that runs from Suriname to Guyana.
It became clear that the cable was intended to meet the objectives of Jagdeo and the deals he was making with his friends.
The granting of cable licences allows the licencees to offer what in the United States and other countries call triple play—internet, television/radio and telephone services.

Vishok Persaud

Even without being coupled with cellular service, cable on the 2.5 GHz Band is a virtual monopoly in the telecommunication sector for whoever owns the licence. When a consumer accesses cable with the triple play, then regular landline services can become irrelevant.
The cable by itself monopolises the interactive flow of information and that is what Jagdeo has given to his two buddies.