PHILIPSBURG: --- Prime Minister Dr. Luc Mercelina confirmed on Wednesday at the Council of Ministers press briefing that TELEM has been working with Huawei, a Chinese multinational technology company founded in 1987. Huawei considers itself a global provider of ICT and smart devices.
SMN News asked the Prime Minister about this a few weeks ago, and back then, he said he was not aware that TELEM was using Huawei locally. SMN News also asked the Prime Minister how much this would impact the Tourism Economy in St. Maarten; to date, the Prime Minister has not provided a response.
Based on reliable information provided to SMN News, the Council of Ministers discussed this with the Bureau of Telecommunications and Post (BTP), and they (COM) were informed by BTP that TELEM Group of Companies never informed them, as the regulator, that they were using Huawei locally.
However, on Wednesday when SMN News asked Prime Minister Dr. Luc Mercelina for an update now that the matter was discussed in the Council of Ministers and BTP, Mercelina confirmed that TELEM has been using Huawei and that they are also working with Curacao and the Netherlands.
However, a simple Google search shows that the Netherlands has not issued a full ban on Huawei, but it has placed severe restrictions on its involvement in critical parts of telecom networks, particularly in core infrastructure (like 5G).
Besides having a partial ban issued by the Netherlands, other countries that banned the use of Huawei are as follows:
- United States
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- Canada
- New Zealand
- Japan
- India
- Sweden
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Lithuania
- Poland
- Czech Republic
- Romania
- Latvia
- Bulgaria
Countries with Restrictions on Huawei (Not Full Ban)
Netherlands
Germany
France
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Belgium
South Korea
Norway
Greece
Finland
Austria
Brazil (some restrictions for 5G contracts)
It should be noted that since the installation of Huawei, the mobile services offered by TELEM have degraded.
Several residents and businesses complained of the lack of mobile and data services in a number of areas on Sint Maarten. Over a week ago residents of Pointe Blanche said they have no services and while TELEM announced that they were conducting maintenance work in the area, they have not seen any of TELEM crew working in the Pointe Blanche area.
Persons visiting St. Maarten from North America also stated that they too cannot connect to TELEM Network and only those persons whose US carrier that has roaming agreements with UTS are able to connect to their network while visiting St. Maarten.
