PHILIPSBURG--Interim Director of Bureau Telecommunication St. Maarten (BTP-SXM) Peggy-Ann Brandon in an invited comment on Wednesday said the bureau has every intention to address satellite TV providers on St. Maarten who are not licensed and who do not have a concession to offer what they are putting out on the market.
Brandon said tackling illegal satellite TV providers is an inevitable step in regulating an industry on St. Maarten that has never been addressed. She said while some satellite providers claim to only sell the hardware, a subscription is needed for content to actually use the hardware. This subscription makes use of Dish Network and a US address for payment methods. Moreover, Dish Network is not legally available outside US territories.
She said, however, that this issue in particular requires careful manoeuvring through the market to avoid "missing the boat" in various related areas. At present, Brandon said, the focus is on ensuring that the local Cable TV providers are up to par "content and quality wise," guided by a framework that would render going to a satellite provider a moot point.
"We have to make sure that the current concession holders will be able to provide the content and quality the public expects," she said. WTN-Cable, like St. Maarten Cable TV, also has to abide by strict enforcement of the law by BTP (see related story).
In another invited comment, Director of St. Maarten Cable TV Beulah Jonis said Caribbean cable TV operators that are non-US have been going through this concern (with satellite providers) for decades. She said while cable operators want to provide the subscribers with programming they are asking for, the issue of copyrights infringement has become more and more the focus the last couple of years for the region.
"In the last five years it has become more government matter for the region since the programmers have been approaching the regulators in the respective countries for their cooperation in dealing with this matter. Jamaica and Trinidad came under heavy scrutiny by the US government for allowing violation of intellectual properties when it comes to programming," Jonis explained.
She continued: "In March 2011 we had a transfer of ownership, whereby one of the requirements we had to put in place was securing agreements related to programming that is available for our region. St. Maarten is considered Latin America, despite English being widely spoken on the island. Caribbean islands that are not US being considered Latin America is not within our control and at this point we cannot do anything about it."
"St. Maarten Cable TV is a member and board member of the regional organization, the Caribbean Cable Co-Op, which has been lobbying with US programmers to get the US feed for over 15 years now. We are making some strides, because some of the programmers such as MTV have made some of their US channels available to the Caribbean region. St. Maarten Cable TV will continue the lobbying efforts, but in the meantime we have to take the programming that is legally available to our region."
She added that while the Latin America Channels are being called "Spanish," it must be noted that 80 per cent of the programming of these channels, e.g. A&E, History Channel, TLC, TBS are in English. The advertising and interstitials are most of the time in Spanish.
"However, for the digital Cable TV service, we have made sure to contract the services of an electronic programme guide that will have the programming information and programming details in English as much as possible, to deal with the issue of non-Spanish speaking subscribers," Jonis said.
She stressed that infringing on copyrights laws and intellectual property should not only be a concern of just the Cable TV Provider, but also our government since the country can also come under major scrutiny for allowing this.
