Corporate Crap in communication

So the long awaited GSM technology for our outdated cellphones is supposed to come into place by the end of this year. Mind you its been a long time coming, very long, like since 2002 they started saying "it will be up in two months time," that two months has brought us this far :) But what is the real story about the delay, of GSM. Well here it is, while working for Observer I did some investigation into it, I found the full story but unfortunately at the time SamoaTel was one of Observers main Advertisers and as we all know, without them newspapers will not survive, so the Editor basically said no stories about major advertisers, how about that for balanced reporting.:) THe story has developed thus far and I followed through it interesting and intrcate weavings of corruption. Here is a brief descrip.

The Government signed an agreement with Telecom Samoa Cellular when they first entered the country that they would be the sole mobile phone provider. At that time SamoaTel (Samoa Post and Telecomunications) was a pathetic discorganised Government body, with little to no substance. That being said, they were doing a good job with their small budget, but since it was established first it already had the towers and and advanced facilities and equipment ahead of Telecom. So when Samoa decided GSM was to be adopted, SamoaTel had the towers but Telecom Samoa had the rights to implement the technology on Mobile Phones. The catch was, Telecom did not have the towers or facilities to introduce GSM and SamoaTel was not willing to share its resources, so thus the gridlock. SamoaTel of course were legally prohibited from introducing GSM on Mobile Phones as the Government signed the contract with Telecom. So here we had everything to enable Samoa to use GSM (in 2002) but a piece of paper was stopping the process for four years all because some ass-fuck signed an agreement without thinking forward. So how was the Government going to get out of this one. Easy really, they create their own mobile phone provider in the form of DigiCell to take up the other half of the market. Now you might ask, but DigiCell is owned by an Irish man, indeed it is, but 50% of the local shares are owned by CSL and CSL as you may know is owned by the Government. So now DigiCell can share the use SamoaTel towers, and Telecom builds from scratch. So where is the piece of paper? I dont know, but its obvious some ammendments were made during the arguing process and the Government came out on top. So why the infatuation with communication, simple really, Samoa rates one of the highest as fastest growing mobile phone users in the world since the introduction of this technology to the country, so a lot of much money is to be sucked dry from the people thhrough a piece of metal with wiring inside and the Government is making sure they suck it not anyone else. So if this is happening, what else is happening in this beautiful Paradise of ours? Its true indeed eh' "Absolute power corrupts absofuckinglutely!"