Citing a 90 percent resolution of issues, the Senate unanimously voted yesterday to adopt a special committee report supporting the sale of Verizon from Micronesian Telecommunications Co. to Pacific Telecom Inc.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very close to finalizing the sale of Verizon. Almost all of the issues raised have been addressed except for two items,\u201d special committee chair Sen. Diego Songao said in yesterday\u2019s session, even as he noted that the sale negotiation may finally reach an agreement by October this year.<\/p>\n
He said that of 31 issues, 29 have been resolved by parties involved\u2014including Verizon, PTC, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Attorney General\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Only two issues remain to be addressed: the minimum capitalization and financing investigation and the inter-island cable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe parties feel that the first issue will be resolved quickly. The second issue will take a bit longer,\u201d Songao in special committee report 14-01.<\/p>\n
The senator said that based on the parties\u2019 estimate, CTC would be able to resolve all issues in eight to nine weeks or about October this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe [special] committee is satisfied with the efforts put forth to date by all involved\u2026,\u201d said Songao. <\/p>\n
During yesterday\u2019s session, Senate minority leader Pete Reyes expressed his support for the committee\u2019s recommendation \u201cto put an end to a seemingly endless bickering\u201d between the Babauta administration and PTI.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you can see, when a certain issue is resolved, the administration would raise a new [one]\u2026 It\u2019s an endless [cycle]. If the adoption of this report would put an end to that cycle, I\u2019m in favor of it. We want the sale to go on. Get this on. We support it,\u201d said Reyes.<\/p>\n
He noted the administration\u2019s handling of the sale would send \u201ca very negative message to foreign investors.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Senate report, according to Songao, was made after conducting a joint hearing with the concerned parties, \u201cand after much discussion and deliberation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The committee said it finds that the parties, under CTC, \u201chave been diligently attempting to resolve the issues that need to be settled prior to the sale of Verizon to PTI.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the same report, the committee recommended raising the CTC funding to the previous level of 2.5 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cCTC is not properly funded to investigate regulatory complaints and an increase is necessary if it is to properly regulate the industry,\u201d said the committee. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Citing a 90 percent resolution of issues, the Senate unanimously voted yesterday to adopt a special committee report supporting the sale of Verizon from Micronesian Telecommunications Co. to Pacific Telecom Inc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}