Musings about Coding, Business and other Geek Stuff Live and Direct from somewhere on the planet
November 13, 2002
Boycott of Cable & Wireless tonight in Panama

Nodo: Huelga contra Cable & Wireless
It sounds like Panamanians are starting to have enough of the great British Company.

An email is circulating in Panama to do a half hour boycot of the telephone at 6:30pm Panamanian time.

According to the mail they did that against Telefonica in Spain last year (Russell can you confirm this?) and succeded in lowering tarifs.

Cable & Wireless have $2+pm phone charges to the UK. This is what they are trying to protect by blocking the UDP ports.

In addition Panama is receiving 600 of the 3500 global layoffs at C&W.

In all the British (and former British) islands in the Caribbean Cable & Wireless had a strong monopoly for years. They were real bastards there. They also introduced the port blocking trick in the Caymans and I think a few other places.
An old acquaintance of mine in Jamaica, Patrick Terrelonge who founded InfoChannel the first ISP on the island was a personal victim of C&W's strong hand tactics and became a bit of a folk hero for it.

In the Caribbean people tend to call them "Cable and Wutless" (Worthless)

Posted by pelleb at November 13, 2002 09:04 AM
This entry was posted in the following Categories: Panama
Comments

Sorry Pelle, I haven't heard anything about it. I asked my coworkers, and they hadn't heard anything either.

There's been several issues that have come up since I've been here - and since Telefonica has a monopoly on the wires that enter your house, they get a lot of grief, but I don't know of any boycott per se. And the prices here are still sky high, so I can't imagine it had much impact even if there WAS a boycott that I didn't hear about. ;-)

-Russ

Posted by: Russ on November 14, 2002 01:32 AM
Post a comment
Name:


Email Address:


URL:


Comments:


Remember info?