Entry into Solomons continues to raise questions

Alfred Sasako




 
 
bemobile, the controversial choice by the Solomon Islands government to provide the nation’s second mobile network, is finally registered here with its sight set on 25,000 customers by year’s end.
  As he sets to work, Chief Executive Officer, Julien Coustaury, has promised 80 percent coverage of the nation within 21 months of launching, a tall order in a country where land issues are nothing short of frustration and procrastination.
  So far, the company has made one change, donning a new name. It is now beMobile Solomon Islands—with plans to launch between June and September this year.
  It’s unclear whether it is a private company with limited liability. A report in the nation’s Solomon Star newspaper did not include the word in the new title.
  Its registration came well over a month after it won the telecommunications licence to become the nation’s second mobile network provider.
  Prime Minister Derek Sikua presented the company, then known as beMobile, with the telecommunications licence on December 18, 2009—at least four days after the company had received it from the Telecommunications Evaluation Unit.
  Led by Mike Hemmer, a former American Peace Corps worker, the committee has earned the ire of some senior politicians who felt the process involving the granting of the telecommunications licence to beMobile leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
  Last month, the Foreign Investment Board [FIB] finally issued the registration licence after it threw out the company’s initial application, citing inconsistencies with FIB requirements.
  Some politicians now say the new Telecommunications Act, barely a year old and said to have been drafted offshore, will be amended to either struck out the committee from its provisions or have its power curtailed.
  “I think the committee has been given far too much power. They must be made to report through Cabinet, rather than what had happened in the recent granting of beMobile telecommunications licence,” a senior government minister said.
  “Even up to this point in time, some of us don’t know how the committee arrived at its decision in picking a company no one has heard of, let alone a track record,” he said.
  But as the Coustaury team began the mammoth task ahead, questions continue to be asked, both of the company and the government which is represented by Hemmer’s Telecommunications Evaluation Committee. Some of these questions are coming not from ordinary people but senior government ministers.
  Questions as to how beMobile won the bid in the first place, whether cabinet had sanctioned the winning bidder before it was publicly announced and so on.
  “Some of us are quite surprised how beMobile got the telecommunications licence. It never came before us in cabinet.
  “Because if it did, we would have raised a lot of questions, especially about the company’s track record,” one other senior minister confided in me.
  “As far as we know, the company has never been anywhere except in Papua New Guinea where it is a subsidiary of PNG Telikom. That’s not [not] really much to go by, is it?”
  The minister acknowledged that the Telecommunications Evaluation Committee does have the power to decide on such matters.
  “I think their powers are far too broad and we may need to amend that provision to avoid giving a blank cheque in future,” the minister said.
  It’s not the only teething problem beMobile’s entry into Solomon Islands has created.
  ISLANDS BUSINESS has learned that beMobile’s initial FIB application for a registration licence was rejected on December 14 last year.
  Sources said that by then, FIB had learned that beMobile had been granted the telecommunications licence as the nation’s second telecommunications provider.
  “As a process, beMobile was advised to appeal the FIB decision through a Facilitating Committee. They never did.
  “Instead, the company chose to submit a fresh application,” one source said.
  This was the licence the FIB, which acts as the nation’s watchdog on foreign investments, finally issued on 18th January. More has since emerged why the FIB had rejected the initial application.
  Sources familiar with the process said the application was rejected because it was “not consistent with FIB requirements”.
  “The company should have obtained the operations licence first before it conducts any business activities in this country. That’s what the law says,” one source said.
  “Instead, beMobile or those who represent its interests here decided to turn things back to front. That’s not consistent with the law, so the initial application was thrown out,” the source said.
  The source also said the handover by the Prime Minister of  beMobile’s licence on December 18 was merely a photo opportunity to give some legitimacy to the process and image to the new outfit.