Cur­tis Williams

New­ly-ap­point­ed chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Dig­i­cel T&T, John Delves, has called for a lev­el­ing of the play­ing field be­tween his com­pa­ny and its main ri­val Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT). It has been six weeks now since Delves took con­trol of the Dig­i­cel's lo­cal busi­ness, but he ar­gued while Dig­i­cel has now emerged as the coun­try's num­ber one mo­bile provider, it has tak­en longer to be­come num­ber one be­cause the play­ing field has not been lev­el. Asked why it had tak­en Dig­i­cel six years to have the largest mar­ket share in the mo­bile sec­tor as op­posed to how the com­pa­ny was able to quick­ly dom­i­nate the mar­kets of the east­ern Caribbean and Ja­maica, Delves said: "A key dif­fer­ence here is that we ob­vi­ous­ly don't re­al­ly com­pete in the gov­ern­ment sec­tor. "The fact that our com­peti­tor is 51 per cent owned by the Gov­ern­ment means there is a whole sec­tion of the mar­ket that we are ef­fec­tive­ly blocked out from. So while the mar­ket has been lib­er­alised, there hasn't been true lib­er­al­i­sa­tion in that the play­ing field isn't ex­act­ly flat. The odds are still tilt­ed slight­ly against us. What ob­vi­ous­ly we would like is a ful­ly lev­el play­ing field." He ar­gued that Dig­i­cel can of­fer the Gov­ern­ment much bet­ter ser­vice at more com­pet­i­tive rates than TSTT and feels that should be what both the Gov­ern­ment and busi­ness should want in tough eco­nom­ic con­di­tions.

The new Dig­i­cel CEO said the com­pa­ny was well over its mar­ket share in terms of pre­paid cus­tomers and pri­vate com­pa­nies. He said: "We think by of­fer­ing cus­tomers the best net­work, the best cov­er­age, the best cus­tomer care, we can con­tin­ue to grow." In a wide rang­ing in­ter­view at his of­fice on Mon­day, Delves said Dig­i­cel was un­afraid of com­pe­ti­tion and should the Gov­ern­ment seek to bring in an­oth­er play­er in the lo­cal mar­ket, it will be pre­pared to com­pete as long as the rules of com­pe­ti­tion are fair. "What Dig­i­cel prides it­self in is bring­ing com­pe­ti­tion to the Caribbean. When Dig­i­cel first came 11 years ago, we broke mo­nop­o­lies right across the re­gion. So if fur­ther com­pe­ti­tion comes in­to the mar­ket place, we will em­brace it. I al­ways feel com­pe­ti­tion is good, whether it is two play­ers of three, and we'll be hap­py to com­pete against any­one," Delves told the Busi­ness Guardian. A key strat­e­gy to com­pet­ing, said Delves, is the in­tro­duc­tion of the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy and hand­sets af­ford­able to the av­er­age con­sumer. It is in this con­text he boast­ed of Dig­i­cel's abil­i­ty to beat TSTT to the mar­ket with wide­spread 4G cov­er­age. He ex­plained there were a lot of Smart­phone own­ers who were un­able to make the max­i­mum use of their phone be­cause of the lim­it­ed da­ta ca­pac­i­ty of the net­work, but promised change.

He said loy­al Dig­i­cel cus­tomers now have a net­work that can re­al­ly make a smart phone be used the way it was de­signed. He talked about peo­ple's frus­tra­tion at not hav­ing the full range of ac­cess to Smart­phones' ca­pa­bil­i­ties. "I think the pen­e­tra­tion is un­like­ly to in­crease. But the point is, will peo­ple switch from one de­vice to an­oth­er and I think they will be­cause now you can get so much more out of your Smart­phone. There will be greater in­te­gra­tion of the smart­phone with peo­ple's lives," Delves said. He point­ed to an ex­plo­sion in apps with 2.25 bil­lion apps per month be­ing down­loaded, which will bring the phone to life, and the third el­e­ment miss­ing is the net­work. He said: "We are ob­vi­ous­ly proud that we are the first net­work to bring true 4G net­work to your phone." Delves said while Smart­phones have the fea­tures of lap­tops and will lead to an in­crease in In­ter­net pen­e­tra­tion in T&T, the re­al threat to the lap­tops and PC will come from tablets. "I def­i­nite­ly think the tablet is the di­rect threat to the lap­top. I think a lot of peo­ple now are quite hap­py to have their tablet pro­vide that every­day use. Smart­phones are get­ting smarter and they are, in a re­al sense, small lap­tops from what you can get on a Smart­phone to­day. So I think, yes, it will in­crease In­ter­net pen­e­tra­tion."

He said the key to in­crease In­ter­net pen­e­tra­tion will be en­sur­ing hand­sets are af­ford­able. In a clear jab at his com­peti­tor, TSTT, Delves said this has not his­tor­i­cal­ly been the case. "Dig­i­cel T&T has launched Smart­phones from as low as $499, so again there is no point in hav­ing the net­work, no point in hav­ing the ap­pli­ca­tions if you can't pro­vide af­ford­able high qual­i­ty hand­sets." He added: "Our strat­e­gy when we came in­to the Caribbean 11 years ago was to make sure that com­mu­ni­ca­tion wasn't on­ly for the elite, wasn't on­ly for the rich, that com­mu­ni­ca­tions should be ac­ces­si­ble for every­one. We want to do the ex­act thing in pro­vid­ing broad­band ac­cess for your mo­bile. So we will be sub­si­dis­ing the Smart­phone de­vices. We have in­creased the pen­e­tra­tion of Smart­phone hand­sets." While ad­mit­ting the mar­ket is sat­u­rat­ed, Delves said Dig­i­cel's fu­ture growth will come from peo­ple switch­ing over and mak­ing Dig­i­cel their pri­ma­ry hand­set for voice and da­ta. He ex­plained that the 4G in­vest­ment ran in­to a few hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars, in­clud­ing sub­si­dis­ing hand­sets to en­sure peo­ple had ac­cess. Asked if it was not re­al­ly a busi­ness de­ci­sion to flood the mar­ket with hand­sets so that when TSTT comes with its 4G, peo­ple would have al­ready been locked in­to Dig­i­cel's plans, Delves said the com­pa­ny on­ly wants to make Smart­phones ac­ces­si­ble.

About John Delves

A grad­u­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ul­ster with first-class ho­n­ours in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing, Delves is the fa­ther of three, with a fourth ex­pect­ed soon. He said his fam­i­ly will be mov­ing to T&T when his wife de­liv­ers their fourth child. At age 35, the young CEO said the Dig­i­cel T&T team is the strongest he has come across in the Caribbean. He wants to build on that in­her­it­ed suc­cess. He has two oth­er plans: in­vest in new tech­nol­o­gy through 4G, and fo­cus on the cus­tomer, not the com­peti­tor. Asked about the fu­ture of its Black­ber­ry phones in the con­text of the chal­lenges be­ing faced by its mak­ers Re­search in Mo­tion, Delves said what­ev­er hap­pens Black­ber­ry will be around in on e-shape or fash­ion and has been very suc­cess­ful phone re­gion­al­ly and be­yond.