I’M one of the recent victims of Trinidad’s massive new criminal enterprise: stealing cable lines for the copper. My office landline, which relied on these copper cable lines for a fixed-line telephone service and faxes, is no more.
I understand that thieves are opportunists, but I can’t help but lay some of the blame on TSTT for facilitating the current state of affairs.
I’ve had my landline with TSTT for more than ten years without complaint. Around November last year, TSTT called me saying it was on a drive to “upgrade” all its landline customers to a wireless service, which was not dependant on the copper-based telephone lines. I said okay and scheduled an appointment for the technician to come to my office to set me up with the “upgrade”.
When the TSTT technician showed up, I didn’t want to assume all the functionality I had with the copper-based service would automatically be the same with the wireless service.
So, I asked the tech guy. To my surprise, the service was a downgrade. For example, I would lose the call forwarding feature which was an available add-on I paid for with my copper-based service.
Call forwarding gives landline owners mobility. When this feature is activated, all calls made to the landline are redirected to an alternate number. It’s incredibly useful. Whenever I’m out of office, for example on a site visit or working from home, I would redirect calls from the landline to my cell phone. That way, I never miss a call!
TSTT has said that they do not know if or when they will add the call forwarding feature to their wireless service. I found this odd because it seemed all the other landline service providers in the country with the wireless technology offers call forwarding.
Another vexing issue is that TSTT suggested I look at transferring my landline service to their sister company AMPLIA. They said too that they would gladly port my telephone number to that company. (Porting means I would have kept my landline number, even though I was with another company). But when I called AMPLIA to inquire of that possibility, lo and behold, they had not yet rolled out service to my area in Cunupia.
On top of all that, I was reliably informed by the other service providers I contacted, that TSTT refuses to port TSTT landline numbers to companies other than AMPLIA.
A judgment by Justice Frank Seepersad in CV2019-01499: Columbus Communications Trinidad Limited v. Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago was widely publicised last year.
The learned judge ruled that TSTT was legally obligated to port landline numbers to other service providers, when requested to do so. To hear that TSTT was still refusing to port landline numbers in 2022 to anyone other than AMPLIA had me flabbergasted.
Due to the proliferation of cellphone usage among the public and the primacy of emails over all other forms of instantaneous communication, landlines and faxes are now almost dinosaur technology. I expect landlines may one day disappear like pagers and phone booths. But that time has not yet arrived.
About two weeks ago, my landline lost its dial tone. I presume the cable bandits had struck my area. I called TSTT expecting they would send a technician to check my telephone line. I was bluntly told TSTT’s policy is to not offer any support for copper-based telephone lines anymore. My only option was to take their inferior wireless service.
After weighing all the pros and cons, I decided that TSTT’s inferior wireless service and refusal to port my landline number made keeping my landline with that company a bad business decision. I instructed TSTT to close my account. Bye-bye TSTT landline…
In my view, TSTT’s policies and decisions have allowed the copper cable thefts to proliferate. TSTT should have “take front”. They should have approached the Minister of Public Utilities to urgently pass legislation heavily penalising the theft of TSTT’s copper lines, e.g. with $100,000 fines and imprisonment for three years or more.
TSTT should have acquired a wireless landline system with all the functionality of the copper-based landline service, not the inferior version they have now. Then TSTT should have sensibly and swiftly transferred customers to the wireless service while their employees safely removed and secured the copper-based lines for sale with haste.
It would be interesting to note how many other landline customers TSTT will lose because of their actions (or lack thereof).
Be safe Trinidad and Tobago.
Copyright © 2022 Neela Ramsundar, LL.B (HONS), L.E.C is a Civil Litigation Attorney at Law & Certified Mediator.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are for general informative purposes only and/or contain the opinions and/or thoughts of the writer only. It does not provide legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship with any reader. For legal advice on your specific situation, please contact an Attorney-at-Law of your choosing directly. Liability for any loss or damage of any kind whatsoever allegedly incurred a consequence of relying on content in this article is thus hereby excluded to the fullest extent permitted by law.
We had the exact experience. Old copper line landline went dead in wee hours of morning. A call to TSTT revealed that this was (apparently) due to vandalism, and that they would no longer be fixing copper lines issues. Our only TSTT option was to switch over to their new upgraded system (and be without our landline for however long it took to schedule the upgrade) , which we’d heard from many sources was unreliable and problematic. So we opted to cancel the land-line we’ve had for decades…