What About Cable Services & the Integrity of Internet Infrastructure?

John Briceño

At today’s press conference, while on the topic of essential services, the head table was asked about cable companies and internet service providers. A large chunk of the workforce will be telecomputing, students will be online with school work, and others will spend their time surfing the net or browsing various social media platforms and even binge watching their favourite shows and movies on Netflix. The Leader of the Opposition, John Briceño was also asked about the integrity of the internet infrastructure.

John Briceño, Leader of the Opposition

“The increase has doubled, but what has helped is the major companies like Netflix and Google already have servers in Belize so what we are using is the local bandwidth and so the bandwidth that they use to go outside is limited. So for the time being, they do have enough. Maybe they might need later on, some more, but for the time being we are okay.”

Reporter

“Can you clarify whether cable and internet companies fall under public utilities and if not, will any consideration be given to place these companies under essential services?”

Michael Peyrefitte

Michael Peyrefitte, Attorney General

“Well consideration will be given to those service providers. The Leader of the Opposition had indicated to me, today before the press conference started that he would like to have a discussion on that. Currently they are not, but when we considered public utilities we meant those were monitored by the Public Utilities Commission.”