BTL accepts defeat: chairman closes acquisition chapter, confirms dominance ruling

By Breaking Belize News Staff (HP): Belize Telemedia Limited has formally accepted the collapse of its Speednet bid. In a message to staff dated Thursday, August 14, and obtained by Breaking Belize News, Board Chairman Markhelm Lizarraga told employees that “Cabinet announced that it does not support BTL’s proposed acquisition of SMART/Speednet. We respect Cabinet’s decision and the process through which it was reached.”

The letter also confirms, from BTL’s own leadership, the regulatory consequence Speednet described hours earlier: the Public Utilities Commission has determined BTL a dominant provider. Lizarraga was blunt about what that means, writing that the ruling “has fundamentally changed the environment in which we operate,” bringing “additional regulatory obligations, greater oversight and constraints” demanding more discipline in how the company operates, competes, invests and serves customers.

“The process of how we could have expanded our business through an acquisition is now behind us. We close that chapter,” the chairman wrote, thanking staff for the months of work on the transaction.

The path forward, per Lizarraga, is the company’s continued transformation “from a Telco into a broader TechCo,” pursuing digital services, cloud, cybersecurity, managed services, enterprise solutions and emerging technologies. “We should not underestimate the headwinds we face,” he cautioned, “but neither should we allow those headwinds to define what Digi/BTL can become.”

The letter closes the most contested corporate saga of the year with both companies now committed, on the record, to competing.

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