Verizon scouting location for new customer service center

Two days after taking over Verizon’s operations, Pacific Telecom, Inc. disclosed plans to put up a new customer service center that will also house an Internet station.

PTI president and chief executive officer Jose Ricardo P. R. Delgado said his team began scouting for a new location for the plan to put up a new customer service center in addition to the existing one on Middle Road, Chalan Laulau.

“We want to serve customers better,” Delgado said. Since PTI’s takeover of Verizon Wednesday, the company has ended interisland long distance charges for calls within the CNMI.

This development came about pursuant to a settlement agreement that PTI and Micronesian Telecommunications Corp. entered into with Gov. Juan N. Babauta and CNMI consumer counsel Brian Caldwell before the Commonwealth Telecommunications Commission finally approved the multi-million-dollar sale.

The agreement also provided that there would be no local rate hike for two years from the transaction’s closing and that PTI would invest a minimum of $20 million in capital expenditures during the next five years.

The company earlier said it would join the National Exchange Carrier Association. The parties expected PTI’s membership to NECA to provide assistance in rate and tariff development, industry database management, compliance auditing, economic forecasting, trend analysis and regulatory policy analysis.

PTI has kept Verizon’s management and staff. Delgado disclosed Wednesday the addition of former CNMI magistrate Jose Dela Cruz to the new Verizon team.

Delgado expressed optimism that Dela Cruz could help the company in the ongoing negotiations with the Marianas Public Lands Authority. Yesterday, he said PTI wrote the MPLA a letter informing the agency of Dela Cruz’s joining in the negotiations.

“We’re hopeful that MPLA can be reasonable. MPLA should be pro-investor,” Delgado said.

The MPLA has withheld its decision to give its consent to the transfer of some four land leases from MTC to PTI. Of the 11 land leases Verizon has with the MPLA, the agency’s attorney, Ramon Quichocho, said four of them explicitly require the agency’s consent to their assignment from the original lessee.

Another issue being discussed in the negotiations is the renewal of Verizon’s lease for its Susupe facility, which Quichocho recently described as very close to being settled. Also being negotiated is a permit agreement for public lands easement for Verizon’s underground cable.

The Saipan Tribune telephoned Quichocho’s office yesterday afternoon, but the call had yet to be returned at press time.