And in this analysis of cable acquisitions - the company owned by the Prime Minister's family - Centaur Cable is reported to also be on offer to BTL.
Now, the PM is the minister of public utilities and also appointed Lizarraga to the board. When we asked the Chairman about it today - he did not deny that Centaur could be on the table - but, instead spoke very generally, and said it is a strategic business decision:
Reporter
"Does DIGI also plans to purchase Centaur Cable which is owned by the Prime Minister's family?"
Mark Lizzaraga, Chairman, BTL
"If you look at the industry worldwide everybody is going for what they called a quad play, that is telephone, internet to the home, mobile and content and what's interesting is that all over the world there are acquisitions, mergers, moves to consolidate because of the technology now and because you can put so much through fiber. It is just more efficient. Unfortunately, we did things a little backwards in Belize in my view. We put in the infrastructure with nothing to put in it. Now we have this asset which we paid a lot of money for, we have to be careful how we go about using it and see if there are partnerships or public/private partnerships or whatever sort of engagement we can entertained to see how we stop the race to the bottom and how we can improve the profitability of the company. BTL, unfortunately needs to improve on its profitability, needs to start paying back you, the owners of this company for that humongous investment that you have in this company. Our mandate in the new board is to see how we can turn the company around so that we can pay back for this substantial investment that you the people of Belize have made."
