C.E.O. retires after 30 years at the phone co.

He gave the majority of his life to the nation’s phone company, and on January first, after thirty years at B.T.L. and its predecessor B.T.A., Ediberto Tesucum stepped down as the company’s chief executive officer. This morning he told News 5 that he retires happily, with few regrets.

Ediberto Tesucum, Retired C.E.O., B.T.L.

“I would think that if I had a second chance it would just be to look at the competitive environment and have the opportunity to see through to that environment, but no regrets at all.”

“I don’t know that there is anything that hasn’t been done. Maybe it hasn’t been done to the extent that I would have liked to see it done, for example, communications in the rural areas…Quite a bit of areas have been covered. I would say that the one that we were less effective was in the south due to the terrain itself, which has made it difficult, and to a certain extent, prohibited where costs are concerned as well. I would have hoped that we had had a formula with government that could have helped in that direction then certainly we could have done better. I really would have liked to see that happen.”

With regard to those costs, and a public perception that B.T.L.’s profit margins are achieved at the expense of consumers, Tesucum says that the company has always worked in the best interest of the customer.

Ediberto Tesucum

“It’s not just that we were making profit sake, but a good amount of it was invested back into the company, into the infrastructure of the company itself which, when you look at it, really was for the benefit of the customers as well. Because when you look at it, if we had just retained our profits, if there was no cellular service for example, how would we accommodate our customers who are mobile? Or for that matter, with the internet coming on stream as well, if had not invest in that area, how would we have been able to meet the demands of our customers.”

“Seriously, when we look at the rates themselves, the infrastructure of the company in terms of its cable plant, its transmission equipment, it exchange and so on, it’s a very, very expensive capital-intensive, and as far as local rates are concerned, there’s no way we could recover just from the rates of local calls. Most of it was being subsidised from our international calls.”

B.T.L.’s new board Chairman is Dean Boyce, who took over from Lord Michael Ashcroft as of January first. Boyce has worked with the Cable and Wireless Company in Saint Marteen. The executive team at B.T.L. will now be accountable to him. Tesucum, meanwhile, is not totally out of the picture as he will remain as a consultant.