And while Chebat talks about 20 plus medium, small and micro internet service providers, in Cabinet today Lizarraga was forced to defend a morning in October of 2022 when BTL cut all of Channel 7's fixed line, mobile and internet services.
It happened three years ago and our news director recently brought it up in his explanation of why Belize should not go back to a monopoly.
Well, more than three years later BTL came up with an explanation and an apology.
In a letter sent to Jules Vasquez yesterday from CEO Ivan Tesucum, it stated that there was a, quote, "internal administrative error… a billing adjustment for your account was not applied before the automated credit-control process ran." End quote. The letter then apologizes for that oversight.
However, Lizarraga's explanation to the media today was a little different. He insinuated that Channel 7's internet was cut due to unpaid bills - which is false and which Tesucum's letter made no mention of.
Here's what Lizarraga said:
Mark Lizarraga, Chairman, BTL
"You know that we've been accused of pulling the plug on some media houses and we did a review to see in fact the good thing about our system is our systems can tell you when you were billed, when you were not, when you were disconnected, etc, all of that is there in our billing system and there was a mistake and we wrote a letter of apology to Channel 7 and Cabinet has asked that we share it because it's not the policy of the government and it's not the policy of BTL to unplug anybody. And I took that really seriously because I certainly did not ask that Channel 7 be unplugged or any media house. So you'll be receiving a copy of that letter so that we are giving our reassurances that we're putting the media as an essential service type where we would communicate with you before we cut you. Now what happened with the billing system is that if there is a balance due by a certain day, it cuts you automatically. We don't go down the list to see if you pay, you pay, you pay. We have a billing system that does that and does what it called dunning, it cuts you if you don't pay. But what we're going to be doing now is what we do for like hospitals, police, other essential services, we don't cut them, we call them and say you have a bill. So we're putting the media houses onto that plan where before disconnection is done for non-payment, we call them and say please pay your bill. Before we would just cut you, the system would cut you but now we're going to make sure we call you and remind you to pay your bill otherwise you could be disconnected."
Jules said he'll have his full response on a special Wednesday edition of the beef tomorrow.
