By Belize Live News Staff: Twenty four hours. That is how long it took after the business community’s call to pause the Speednet deal for BTL’s board to vote to advance it.
In an internal employee bulletin dated Tuesday, August 4, BTL informed its staff that the Board of Directors, with senior management’s backing, approved the purchase of 100 percent of Speednet, the company behind Smart, that very morning. The deal is not signed yet. Due diligence continues, contractual protections are still being negotiated, and the final Share Purchase Agreement must come back to the board for a separate approval. But the direction is unmistakable: BTL is buying, objections and all.
The bulletin also answered a question the public has been asking since this saga began: the price. Eighty million dollars, which BTL projects will pay for itself in roughly 4.2 years out of Speednet’s own operating cash flows. And it answered the sharpest criticism head on, telling employees the transaction requires no borrowing by BTL and no additional investment from the Social Security Board.
Read that word additional closely, because it is where the two sides talk past each other. The Chamber’s Monday statement warned that pension funds are at risk precisely because the SSB already significantly finances BTL. BTL’s assurance is that the SSB will not be asked for more. Both statements can be true at once, and neither settles the Chamber’s core demands: a second independent valuation, five years of audited Speednet financials, and a merger control law before Belize’s only two mobile networks become one.
BTL’s pitch to the nation is the digital future: less duplicated infrastructure, stronger networks, faster expansion into villages the market has never properly served, jobs, skills and consumer protection. The Chamber’s warning is the classic monopoly playbook: higher prices, weaker service and slower innovation once the competition disappears.
One of those futures is coming. The definitive agreement stage will tell us which arguments carried the room, and whether government, the SSB or the PUC steps in before the ink dries.
So Belize, the price is on the table and the board has voted. Should the deal close, or should the referees stop the game? Sound off below.
