Let's play Monopoly

As a teenager I played  monopoly, it was a game I loved and through it I could gobble up my competition, own serious real estate on Park Lane plus some slum buildings in less desirable neighborhoods, own plenty cash while systematically wiping out and gobbling up my competitors. I could play monopoly fuh hours on end, I was also able to skillfully avoid going directly to jail, no doubt I had friends in high places, probably lawyers and politicians and could grease de system so that if I ever got caught I would  have a “get out of jail free” card.

As I grew older and wiser I lost my appetite fuh Monopoly and looked to other sports that offered competition, after all how much fun could it really be if I had nobody to test my skills against?

Monopoly reminds me of telecommunications and just like when I was a youngster, now emerging to puberty, countries that were former colonies use to play monopoly with telecommunications and we know that one company won everything, there was one monopoly player who had no one wid whom to compete. Yuh felt like yuh testicles were being ripped out, billions of profits being creamed off, who could blame them, after all, it was their bat, their ball, everything just like the game was monopoly!

Then just like de Vendor, countries start to reach puberty (independence) seeming to grow testicles, with it came new games of a competitive nature.

Rumblings lead to deregulation, eventually, lead by the rebellious Jamaica, licences get auctioned, overnight there was an invasion of red Irish men and with them came, not just  Guinness but new balls and bats, we loved it.

The Irish were upstarts, came to shake up de system, mash up monopoly, one country at a time, suddenlyyou could prepay what you could afford, which turned out to be quite a lot, mobile phones became cheap!

When it was bubbadus’s time de razzmatazz was awesome, overnight people had two phones but more was to come, a local company with a cute name Sunbeach got a licence, dis foolish Vendor went and raid de bank account of $20,000.00 and to dis day I ain’t see a Sun of a Beach!

There was also AT&T though dem then pull out before de climax, no consummation, a real quickie!

Later came TeleBarbados, more recently KaribKable bringing fibre to households and cable TV, dialup and ADSL through de eddoes, speed was so fast dat I down load something and did it again only to realize I had down loaded it twice, not unlike some other experiences I had in life!

Before I get accustom to Karib Kable,  Flow was in town and acquired both Karib and TeleBarbados, I say to myself, self, competititon skrinking but all is still good.

Dis past week things change dramatically, after Flow and LIME was spending millions putting fibre all over de island, we wake to news dat LIME parent C&W had bought FLOW for $3 plus Billion dollars, overnight de game of monopoly was back in vogue.

To recap, Sunbeach was still born, AT&T got taken out, TeleBarbados and Karib and now Flow have been taken over and or bought out leaving just one provider on the land line and fibre market and I guess one less player in the cable TV market too!

So we playing monopoly again, I waiting to see what questions gine get ask by de Fair Trading Commissions and governments, I just want to know if monopoly is the game dat we grownups gine play or whether competitive sports gine remain.

I not holding my breath but my two cents worth is dat we should not be playing monopoly, dat game is passé, let we play some proper competitive blood sports

I market Vendor gone fuh now, you have a blessed and a wonderful day, yuh hear?