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Monday, June 9, 2025

?As TSTT gets in­to TV...

Flow adds twenty more channels

by

20091105

Four days af­ter the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) launched a new tele­vi­sion ser­vice, Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (Flow), has an­nounced it plans to add a to­tal of 20 new chan­nels to its ca­ble line up. John Reid, pres­i­dent and chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer at Flow, yes­ter­day said the ad­di­tion­al chan­nels in­clude one which will al­low sub­scribers to view their bills on their tele­vi­sion sets. "We de­cid­ed about 20 new chan­nels for TV and these are mixed be­tween stan­dard de­f­i­n­i­tion and high de­f­i­n­i­tion. The chan­nels are some sport chan­nels from the Unit­ed States, and a 100 per cent Caribbean weath­er chan­nel that we are launch­ing in a cou­ple of days. There would be some kids pro­gram­ming, a new car­toon net­work. There's an out­door chan­nel and an­oth­er one which is called Wild," Reid said.

Flow al­ready has more than 200 dig­i­tal chan­nels and just un­der 70 ana­log chan­nels. Over the next few weeks, video cus­tomers can ex­pect to see the ad­di­tions to their dig­i­tal ba­sic, op­tion­al and high de­f­i­n­i­tion pack­ages. Reid said when Flow launch­es the 20 chan­nels, cus­tomers will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to view the op­tion­al chan­nels for free un­til De­cem­ber 31. In an in­ter­view with the Guardian yes­ter­day, Reid said launch of the chan­nels has been in the plan­ning for months. "We had to make a bunch of changes any­way, so we de­cid­ed to do it all at once. We de­cid­ed to add a bunch of chan­nels rather than adding one, adding one, so we de­lib­er­ate­ly wait­ed un­til now to add," Reid said.

Start of a price war?

Reid's an­nounce­ment came af­ter TSTT an­nounced on Tues­day that it was launch­ing its tele­vi­sion and se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices. The tele­vi­sion chan­nels Blink En­ter­tain­ment is of­fer­ing, grouped in­to three pack­ages at in­tro­duc­to­ry prices, in­clude:

Blink Lite at $99 per month and con­sists of more than 30 chan­nels.

Blink Ba­sic at $199 per month and con­sist­ing of 75 chan­nels, plus more than $120 worth of ad­di­tion­al chan­nels.

Blink Ad­vanced at $219 per month and con­sist­ing of more than 100 chan­nels, plus $195 worth of ad­di­tion­al chan­nels.

Com­pe­ti­tion

Asked whether there would be any ad­di­tion­al cost to Flow cus­tomers for the new chan­nels the com­pa­ny plans to in­tro­duce, Reid said no, that some of the chan­nels would be added to ex­ist­ing pack­ages. "There's been one rate in­crease for ba­sic ca­ble sub­scribers with our com­pa­ny in Trinidad in sev­en years. It's al­most un­heard of in our in­dus­try. We try to con­trol the cost so we can­not pass on the bur­den­some cost to our cus­tomers," Reid said. De­scrib­ing the arrange­ment Flow en­tered in­to with all the in­ter­na­tion­al net­works to car­ry their pro­gram­ming, Reid said it would not cost the com­pa­ny any huge sum of mon­ey to add the chan­nels.

"It's just en­ter­ing in­to an agree­ment and pay­ing when sub­scribers pay you. It's not about Flow pay­ing $50,000 for a con­tract. As our sub­scribers pay us, we pass that on to the con­tent providers," Reid said. Reid said he is not de­terred by com­pe­ti­tion, that com­pe­ti­tion is mere­ly an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­am­ine its ser­vices and de­ter­mine how best they can be im­proved.


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