Update on Cable & Wireless story

Had a quick little chat with one of my contacts in CW. The reason for the lawsuit (see Cable & Wireless are still Evil) is that Clarocom and Telecarrier were installing VOIP boxes including some that had built in ADSL routers at CW client sites. These would then route the calls via CW ADSL net to Clarocom and Telecarrier. If it had been software VOIP they probably wouldn’t have sued.

In reality they Clarocom and Telecarrier did nothing else than what Vonage does. In my old office in Panama we were using Vonage at least 3 years ago. I have also seen 3rd party VOIP boxes for sale for years in just about all electronic stores. It seems the real crime of our two illustrious bandwidth cheats (said with heavy sarcasm) was to be the 2 largest competitors to CW on the long distance market.

C&W are taking a real public relations hit on this one. If you look through Panamanian blogs and forums you will notice that people are getting really worked up about this. I’m seeing stuff like “Maldito ingleses” or “Damned English”.

C&W has unlike the rest of the worlds broadband ISP’s not understood that the internet is internet. As an ISP you do NOT control what people do with it. If they don’t want to be in the internet business, they should get out now.

Of course the above is the fools version. C&W understand really well what the internet is about and they are scared. They are therefore using all the most desperate tricks they have to squeeze as much out of their monopoly situation in Panama and the Caribbean. They are longing back to the days prior to 1995. Back when they had an iron grip on the Caribbean and sucked them dry with outrageous long distance prices, back before they nearly went under in the late 90s from their own internet experiment in the US.

They already succeeded in killing off the 3rd mobile company in Panama, the Dominican non incumbent startup Tricom a couple of years back. Which was done purely by dirty tricks from them and Bell South (now Movistar). They are now trying the same tactics to preserve one of their last pieces of gold.

I am a libertarian and a supporter of free enterprise everywhere in the world. This is not free enterprise this is a company that has been held up since it was founded by corrupt government monopoly practices throughout the world. These guys belong to the pre 1989 world of communism and protectionism, but are still haunting the unsuspecting world of the Caribbean and Latin America with their government payoffs, much the same way Chavez is buying photo oportunities with oil.