Gov. Juan N. Babauta will ease his opposition to the sale of Verizon from Micronesian Telecommunications Corp. if prospective purchaser Pacific Telecom Inc. comes up with a written commitment to significantly lower cable rates and promote investments that benefit the community.<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s lawyer, assistant attorney general James Livingstone, said in an interview that such a written commitment might end the dispute on the issue of whether or not to divest Verizon of part-ownership of the cable facility.<\/p>\n
The remaining issues in the pending application for sale approval by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Commission include Verizon\u2019s monopoly of the cable ownership and PTI\u2019s financial capability to respond to worst-, baseline- and best-case scenarios in the coming years.<\/p>\n
Livingstone said that, if PTI agrees to significantly lower cable rates, the divestiture dispute would come to an end. \u201cThat\u2019s what the governor wants,\u201d Livingstone said.<\/p>\n
Lower cable rates would allow its users to pass on the savings to consumers, he explained.<\/p>\n
Livingstone also lauded the statement issued by PTI vice chair Jovino Lorenzo, who disclosed PTI\u2019s plan to expand Verizon\u2019s broadband capacities, enhance e-health, which allows live medical consultation from off-island doctors online, and e-learning. Target beneficiaries of these plans are schools, libraries, hospital and health centers, he said.<\/p>\n
Lorenzo also said the sale would also pave the way for additional investments in the CNMI, such as call centers.<\/p>\n
Lorenzo also disclosed that it would include local members to its board within three years after the possible approval of the sale by the CTC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Juan N. Babauta will ease his opposition to the sale of Verizon from Micronesian Telecommunications Corp. if prospective purchaser Pacific Telecom Inc. comes up with a written commitment to significantly lower cable rates and promote investments that benefit the community.<\/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-86417","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\/86417","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=86417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}