Digicel-Haiti Foists Fake Fraud Charges to Hide ‘Monopoly’ Power: UPM Reply

The case that UPM brings against Digicel-Haiti “is about resale,” said UPM’s reply brief at the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, dated Monday and posted Tuesday (docket 23-64). UPM bought Digicel-Haiti’s roam like you’re home (RLYH) service at the full retail price that Digicel-Haiti set for it, and then resold it to UPM’s own customers for access to Digicel-Haiti’s network in Haiti, it said.

UPM acquired RLYH service “like any other subscriber here” in the U.S., said the reply. It’s undisputed that Digicel-Haiti would sell RLYH service to anyone in the U.S. with a valid SIM card who paid the enrollment fee, it said. It’s also undisputed that UPM “made no false or misleading statements to Digicel-Haiti to obtain or pay for the services it used,” it said. UPM subscribed to RLYH service “using the same device-to-device electronic process as any other subscriber,” and UPM paid Digicel-Haiti’s full retail price “for each and every minute of RLYH service that UPM used,” it said.

But to hear Digicel-Haiti tell it, “this case is about fraud, fraud, and more fraud” committed by UPM, said the reply. Digicel-Haiti’s claims of UPM fraud “lie somewhere in the realm of gaslighting, the Big Lie, and pure spin,” it said. It’s using the tactic because it’s “desperate to avoid any focus on the fact that it is the monopoly provider of voice telecommunications services in Haiti,” it said.

Digicel-Haiti controls at least 70% of the Haitian voice telephone market, and it charges 23 cents per minute to terminate incoming international calls on its network, the “maximum benchmark rate,” said the reply. That’s a function that costs “far less than a penny” and is provided free of charge in the U.S. under the FCC’s “bill-and-keep rules,” it said. “No other wireless carrier in the world is both dominant in its home market and charges the maximum benchmark rate -- certainly not Vodafone, Orange, Movistar, America Movil, Docomo, or any other major carrier,” it said.

These facts “necessarily and appropriately put a unique regulatory spotlight on Digicel-Haiti,” said the reply. The spotlight rightly subjects Digicel-Haiti’s practices “to a scrutiny that competitive carriers operating in competitive markets do not warrant,” it said. “This case is not about the general state of foreign wireless carriers” offering roaming in the U.S., or the “general issue of back-to-home-country roaming,” it said. “This case is only and entirely about Digicel-Haiti and RLYH.”

Digicel-Haiti uses a “deny, deny, deny” strategy to “defend its illegal, anticompetitive actions,” said UPM’s reply. It denies it’s a carrier, “even though RLYH plainly meets the statutory definition of a telecommunications service,” it said. It also denies it offers RLYH in the U.S., even though it’s undisputed that anyone in the U.S. with a SIM card can pay for, enroll in and use the service from within the U.S., it said. Digicel-Haiti also denies it’s subject “to decades of unbroken precedent holding that carriers must not ban resale of their retail services,” it said.