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Friday, July 11, 2025

Big plans in store at Flow

...ca­ble on your mo­bile com­ing

by

20120628

Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the hold­ing com­pa­ny of Flow, the ca­ble provider, is in ex­pan­sion mode. Colum­bus, which start­ed off with eq­ui­ty of be­tween US$40 and US$50 mil­lion, has in­vest­ed about US$1.1 bil­lion across the Caribbean in its eight years of ex­is­tence and is now con­ser­v­a­tive­ly val­ued at US$2 bil­lion, ex­plained John Reid, the pres­i­dent of Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Bri­an Collins, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Trinidad, in an in­ter­view on Sun­day. Flow, which has been op­er­at­ing in Trinidad, but not To­ba­go, since 2005, has in the last sev­en years al­so be­come syn­ony­mous with ca­ble tele­vi­sion. But the com­pa­ny is plan­ning two new ser­vices, which will re­de­fine ca­ble tele­vi­sion as it moves the sta­tion­ary tele­vi­sion based, home de­vice out of the house and on to the hand­sets of cus­tomers. This new ser­vice, called Flow-on-the-go, will be launched next month when the com­pa­ny's land­line cus­tomers will be able to ac­cess their Flow home phones on their mo­bile phone.

This means that the land­line voice ser­vice will be tak­en "out of your house," said Reid. The com­pa­ny is al­so plan­ning to in­tro­duce an­oth­er as­pect of Flow-on-the-go that would al­low the com­pa­ny's cus­tomers to ac­cess ca­ble telev­sion on their mo­bile de­vices by the fourth quar­ter of this year. "With Flow-on-the-go for ca­ble tele­vi­sion, you will be able to watch your TV wher­ev­er you are in Trinidad on your smart­phone or your tablet. And it's not lim­it­ed to just Trinidad. If you are in Mi­a­mi, in a ho­tel room with wi-fi, you can log-on and watch your home tv from Flow," said Collins. This ser­vice will al­so al­low cus­tomers to man­age their ac­count and pur­chase ca­ble-re­lat­ed prod­ucts and ser­vices by us­ing their smart­phones or tablets. Colum­bus, as well, is plan­ning to launch a new cloud-based record­ing ser­vice be­fore Christ­mas, as yet un­named, which will al­so be avail­able on smart­phones, tablets and oth­er mo­bile de­vices. "Cus­tomers will re­tain their set-top box­es, but we will rent them space in the cloud. This will take away the on­go­ing cost for cus­tomers be­cause there is no rental charge every month. You on­ly buy what you buy, but it re­al­ly does make the ser­vice more ubiq­ui­tous for us and makes it more user friend­ly." The ser­vice al­lows the head of the house­hold to ex­ert parental con­trol on their chil­dren's view­ing habits. Both Reid and Collins said that they ex­pect the in­tro­duc­tion of the cloud-based record­ing sys­tem and ca­ble tele­vi­sion on to mo­bile de­vices will dri­ve the com­pa­ny's rev­enue.

"We think that it will change user pat­terns. These will be very sticky prod­ucts and will dri­ve pen­e­tra­tion," said Collins, hold­ing up an Ipad and show­ing off a sched­ule of pro­grammes, at a con­fer­ence room at the Hy­att on Sun­day af­ter­noon. Reid added: "What we would ex­pect is that be­cause cus­tomers will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take their con­tent with them, that will change their user habits as they will rent more and buy more." Reid said Colum­bus is the first com­pa­ny in the world to in­tro­duce the cloud ser­vice and Trinidad will be the first coun­try in which the ser­vice will be in­tro­duced. Both Flow-on-the-go and the cloud-based ser­vice are part of a new IPTV plat­form which cost US$3.5 mil­lion. Colum­bus is not on­ly ex­pand­ing by of­fer­ing new ser­vices to its cus­tomers, it is al­so plan­ning to ex­tend its foot­print across the Caribbean. At the end of May, the com­pa­ny en­tered in­to a five-year fi­nanc­ing arrange­ment, which gives it ac­cess to fund­ing of US$225 mil­lion. The Se­nior Guar­an­teed Un­se­cured Notes Fa­cil­i­ty, which is due in 2017, was is­sued 9.5 per cent due 2017, which will be paid quar­ter­ly and is callable af­ter 2.5 years. Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment an­nounc­ing the fi­nanc­ing arrange­ment: "The com­pa­ny in­tends to use the net pro­ceeds from the Notes to ac­cel­er­ate the com­ple­tion of cur­rent cap­i­tal plans, fund po­ten­tial fu­ture ac­qui­si­tions, en­hance bal­ance sheet liq­uid­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty and for gen­er­al cor­po­rate pur­pos­es. "En­ter­ing in­to the Notes Fa­cil­i­ty will pro­vide the Com­pa­ny with ad­di­tion­al pro­ceeds to cap­i­talise on near-term op­por­tu­ni­ties and the flex­i­bil­i­ty to pru­dent­ly man­age its fi­nan­cial po­si­tion."

The com­pa­ny ini­tial­ly drew down US$82 mil­lion from the Notes Fa­cil­i­ty, some of which was used in a near-term op­por­tu­ni­ty that arose re­cent­ly-the ac­qui­si­tion of Tele­Bar­ba­dos, the ca­ble com­pa­ny on that is­land. The com­pa­ny is on the look­out for more ac­qui­si­tions in the re­gion, Reid said, and is plan­ning to have a pres­ence in To­ba­go by the mid­dle of next year as a re­sult of the fi­bre op­tic project that is be­ing run be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go. Reid said that there is now ca­ble in 280,000 homes in Trinidad, while the com­pa­ny has 140,000 ca­ble sub­scribers, about 80,000 broad­band cus­tomers and close to 20,000 cus­tomers who use the com­pa­ny's land­line ser­vice. In terms of av­er­age rev­enue per user (ARPU), Collins said that ca­ble tele­vi­sion gen­er­ates US$41, broad­band about US$28 and voice US$22.

Reid said the prospects of the com­pa­ny's ARPU grow­ing in Trinidad were good. "On the ca­ble side, just to give you an ex­am­ple of why it grows: When we came here we had ana­log cus­tomers. When we start­ed con­vert­ing to dig­i­tal, the cus­tomer had many more op­tions. When the av­er­age ana­log cus­tomer con­vert­ed to dig­i­tal, the in­crease in ARPU alone was be­tween 23 and 24 per cent," said Reid, adding that the ex­ist­ing cus­tomers of­ten chose to up­grade from the ba­sic pack­age, which did not in­crease in price. Of the four ser­vices the com­pa­ny pro­vides in Trinidad, its broad­band ser­vice, which was launched in 2007, is grow­ing the fastest at be­tween 20 and 25 per cent, while the growth of voice (land­line) is over 20 per cent and ca­ble is grow­ing at be­tween eight and ten per cent, Reid said.

The com­pa­ny's busi­ness mod­el has changed in the sev­en years it has been op­er­a­tional in Trinidad, Reid said, not­ing that when it first start­ed pro­vid­ing ca­ble ser­vice in 2006, that com­prised 98 per cent of its rev­enues. Now ca­ble tele­vi­sion con­tributes 60 per cent of its rev­enues. Colum­bus al­so pro­vides a busi­ness-to-busi­ness ser­vice, which has at­tract­ed be­tween 4,500 and 5,000 cus­tomers and which now com­pris­es be­tween 25 and 28 per cent of the com­pa­ny's rev­enue. Af­ter Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions was es­tab­lished in 2004, its first as­set in the Caribbean was Ca­ble Ba­hamas, where it ac­quired 30 per cent of the ca­ble provider. That stake was di­vest­ed in 2009.

In 2005, Colum­bus pur­chased CCTV in Trinidad, Mer­it Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (the ca­ble provider) in Ja­maica and AR­COS (Amer­i­c­as Re­gion Caribbean Op­ti­cal-ring Sys­tem), which pro­vides a fi­bre op­tic sub­ma­rine com­mu­ni­ca­tions ca­ble un­der­sea link­ing the Caribbean to Latin Amer­i­ca and to Flori­da. Apart from Ja­maica and Trinidad, Colum­bus now has op­er­a­tions in Cu­ra­cao and Grena­da will start up op­er­a­tions in Bar­ba­dos this year. Reid said that Colum­bus made an ini­tial in­vest­ment of US$110 mil­lion in ac­quir­ing CCTV-which com­prised four ca­ble providers- and that that ini­tial in­vest­ment has paid for it­self in less than the sev­en years that Colum­bus has op­er­at­ed here.

"That ini­tial in­vest­ment has been an un­qual­i­fied suc­cess," said Reid, adding that Colum­bus has in­vest­ed an ad­di­tion­al US$250 mil­lion in Trinidad in sev­en years and that it ex­pects to in­vest US$40 mil­lion in 2012 and about the same amount next year.

"By any bench­marks that we had for the coun­try, Trinidad is deemed to be suc­cess­ful," Reid


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