BCCI Flags Risks in Telecom Takeover

Belize’s leading business lobby is urging a pause on any Belize Telemedia Limited move to acquire SpeedNet/SMART; however, global telecom analysts argue regulators are increasingly permitting consolidation—provided strict competition safeguards and enforceable consumer protections are in place.

The Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) this week issued a public statement warning that a BTL acquisition of SMART would reshape the national telecommunications landscape, with implications for prices, service quality, innovation, private-sector competitiveness, and public accountability.

BCCI’s core concerns: governance, market power, and public exposure

In its statement, the Chamber said the transaction is premature under Belize’s current legal and regulatory environment and listed four main risk areas.

First, the BCCI flagged transparency gaps arising from the information asymmetry between BTL as a publicly listed entity and SMART as a privately held company, arguing that limited disclosure—particularly around beneficial ownership—prevents the public from properly assessing valuation, fairness, and underlying motivations. It also said a national-asset acquisition of this scale should include meaningful consultation with shareholders and wider stakeholders.

Second, the Chamber highlighted perceived conflicts of interest, pointing to publicly discussed ownership links between SMART and politically exposed persons. The issue has remained prominent in public speculation around a potential transaction, including the fact that the Prime Minister’s family is widely reported to hold shareholding interests in SMART—raising concerns about whether the process would be viewed as serving public policy objectives or private interests.

Third, the BCCI warned of risk to public funds. It said that, given historical precedent, there is a credible possibility that public resources—particularly via the Social Security Board’s exposure as a significant shareholder in BTL—could be placed at risk if any acquisition proceeds without independent valuation, transparency, and appropriate oversight. The Chamber argued that any deterioration in the value of BTL’s investment decisions can flow through to the integrity of the social security fund and its ability to meet benefit obligations.

Fourth, the Chamber underscored likely consumer and business impacts from reduced rivalry in a small market, arguing that—without robust safeguards—consolidation can increase the probability of monopolistic behavior, higher prices, lower service quality, reduced innovation, and weaker bargaining power for both households and enterprises.

The Chamber’s “pause” demand: competition and merger-control rules first

The BCCI’s bottom line was that it cannot support definitive steps toward consolidation at this time. It urged the Government of Belize—BTL’s controlling shareholder—and other parties to halt any move until Belize has modern competition and merger-control legislation that can meaningfully evaluate and regulate dominance.

As a minimum set of prerequisites, the Chamber said any further consideration should be contingent on: verified beneficial-ownership disclosure for all parties; a credible third-party valuation by internationally recognized experts; a transparent public consultation process; binding, enforceable commitments on pricing, service quality, infrastructure sharing, and investment; and explicit protections to prevent public pension-type funds from being exposed without prior parliamentary approval.

How that compares with global trends Deloitte is tracking

The Chamber’s caution lands against a backdrop of accelerating consolidation debates internationally. Deloitte’s November 2024 report, entitled “Wireless Telecoms Consolidation Speeds Up…where regulators allow” had anticipated that regulators in several jurisdictions will approve more “in-market” telecom mergers in 2025 and beyond—particularly in environments where markets are fragmented and smaller operators lack scale.

Deloitte’s central argument is not that consolidation is automatically beneficial, but that regulatory thinking is evolving. Historically, regulators often prioritized keeping the number of consumer-facing telecom providers as high as possible to constrain prices. Increasingly, however, advisers to regulators are weighing whether network resilience, security, and investment capacity might be better sustained when subscale players combine—so long as regulators impose enforceable conditions that preserve competitive outcomes.

Deloitte also distinguishes between two categories of consolidation that matter for consumers:

• Network-sharing and infrastructure consolidation (such as shared radio access networks or standalone tower companies), where the number of retail brands may remain unchanged; and

• “Retail” consolidation that reduces the number of customer-facing players, which is the more consequential—and more heavily scrutinized—form of merger activity.

Deloitte notes that governments and regulators have approved a growing number of deals since 2020 that reduce the number of customer-facing players, often with conditions such as divestitures, pricing commitments, or coverage and investment obligations. At the same time, Deloitte argues that “connectivity choice” is expanding through substitutes and complements such as fixed wireless access, low-earth-orbit satellite broadband in certain geographies, continued multi-generation mobile networks, and the rise of mobile virtual network operators in some markets—factors regulators may consider when assessing whether fewer traditional mobile operators necessarily means less competition.

The policy question Belize now faces

Taken together, the BCCI statement and Deloitte’s global outlook point to a shared principle, even from different angles: consolidation decisions increasingly turn on the strength of the rulebook and the enforceability of safeguards.

For Belize, the central issue may therefore be less about whether telecom consolidation is “good” or “bad” in the abstract, and more about whether the country has the institutional capacity—competition law, merger review standards, transparency norms, valuation discipline, and credible enforcement—to test claims of efficiency and investment against risks of market power and public exposure.

The BCCI has signaled it is willing to engage with government, stakeholders, and technical experts on developing that legislative and regulatory foundation. Whether the BTL–SMART speculation matures into a formal proposal or remains market talk, the Chamber is pressing for the same baseline: rules first, then review.