An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

Re­port­ing from Pun­ta Cana,

Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic

Dig­i­cel is step­ping up in­vest­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go, ex­pand­ing its fi­bre net­work, mo­bile ca­pac­i­ty, se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture and con­nec­tiv­i­ty to To­ba­go while hir­ing more sales­peo­ple, tech­ni­cians and sup­port staff as the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny sees stronger de­mand.

Dig­i­cel Group CEO Marce­lo Catal­do said the lo­cal op­er­a­tion was grow­ing even as the wider group con­tin­ues to re­struc­ture around a lean­er, more de­cen­tralised busi­ness mod­el and greater use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

“On the con­trary, in T&T we are hir­ing be­cause we’re sell­ing more,” Catal­do told Busi­ness Guardian in a sit-down in­ter­view fol­low­ing the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Or­gan­i­sa­tions’ (CAN­TO) 41st An­nu­al Con­fer­ence and Trade Ex­hi­bi­tion in Pun­ta Cana, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, last Wednes­day.

“So we need more sales­peo­ple. So we need more sup­port peo­ple, tech­ni­cians. We’re grow­ing our net­works.”

The com­ments come af­ter Dig­i­cel an­nounced in Feb­ru­ary last year that re­dun­dan­cies would form part of a de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion plan.

In a memo sent to staff at the time, Catal­do said the com­pa­ny had its “eyes firm­ly set on cre­at­ing a lean tel­co struc­ture that em­pow­ers the dri­ve for su­pe­ri­or val­ue cre­ation and puts its mar­kets in the dri­ving seat.”

The memo said Dig­i­cel had spent months care­ful­ly re­view­ing its or­gan­i­sa­tion to struc­ture and re­design the busi­ness “to be fit for the fu­ture”.

The com­pa­ny con­firmed that the plan would af­fect some group-lev­el roles across Cay­man, El Sal­vador, Haiti, Ja­maica, St Lu­cia, T&T and the Unit­ed States, and that it had start­ed a con­sul­ta­tion pe­ri­od with staff. Dig­i­cel said it was seek­ing greater ef­fi­cien­cy and en­sur­ing it had “the right tal­ent in the right places.”

The re­struc­tur­ing lat­er ex­tend­ed to the group’s me­dia op­er­a­tions, with Loop dig­i­tal news and Sports­Max staff paid off and sent home in Au­gust.

Catal­do, how­ev­er, said the pic­ture in T&T is dif­fer­ent.

The com­pa­ny has ex­pand­ed fi­bre in the south and is ex­tend­ing it in­to oth­er ar­eas, while in­creas­ing mo­bile ca­pac­i­ty, strength­en­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty to To­ba­go and work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment on se­cu­ri­ty-re­lat­ed cam­era projects.

“We have ex­pand­ed fiber in the south of the coun­try. We’re ex­pand­ing fi­bre in oth­er ar­eas. The com­pa­ny has a huge com­mit­ment with the Gov­ern­ment be­cause of our cam­era projects on se­cu­ri­ty,” Catal­do said.

He said Dig­i­cel was ex­pand­ing mo­bile ca­pac­i­ty and had in­tro­duced back­up so­lu­tions for To­ba­go.

“We are ex­pand­ing our mo­bile ca­pac­i­ty. We have now back­up so­lu­tions for our con­nec­tiv­i­ty to To­ba­go. So Trinidad and To­ba­go is all about in­vest­ment and growth.”

In­vest­ment is grow­ing

Catal­do de­clined to dis­close the amount be­ing in­vest­ed lo­cal­ly, say­ing a fig­ure could give com­peti­tors in­for­ma­tion about Dig­i­cel’s plans.

“I’d love to give you a num­ber, but that num­ber will get to my com­peti­tors. So let them fig­ure it out and we will just keep in­vest­ing,” he said.

Catal­do point­ed to the grow­ing num­ber of tech­ni­cians work­ing on the ground as the com­pa­ny ex­pands its fi­bre foot­print.

“You see more and more of our tech­ni­cians in the street build­ing fi­bre, more peo­ple sell­ing, more red shirts in the street,” he said.

Dig­i­cel has al­so ex­pand­ed its pre­paid sales net­work, al­low­ing small busi­ness­es and shops to sell its SIM cards.

“We have al­so ex­pand­ed our cap­il­lar­i­ty, sales cap­il­lar­i­ty for pre­paid. Small shops can now sell Dig­i­cel SIM cards. You don’t have to go to a store to buy a SIM card for Dig­i­cel. Right in your neigh­bour­hood you can buy.”

Catal­do said this was bring­ing busi­ness in­to com­mu­ni­ties.

“So that is bring­ing more busi­ness­es to our com­mu­ni­ties as well. We are every­where con­nect­ing our cus­tomers in Trinidad and To­ba­go and in­vest­ing more.”

The in­vest­ment is be­ing shaped by the need to build re­silient telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works across Dig­i­cel’s 25 ju­ris­dic­tions. Many face hur­ri­canes and se­vere weath­er, while T&T has chal­lenges in­clud­ing pow­er out­ages.

“Al­so, pow­er out­ages, so in­vest­ing in so­lar is some­thing that is al­so dif­fer­ent from a tra­di­tion­al coun­try else­where in the world,” Catal­do said.

He called for a reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment that gives op­er­a­tors enough cer­tain­ty to com­mit cap­i­tal for the long term.

“Re­mem­ber that in­vest­ing in a net­work gives a re­turn in years, right?” he said, adding “So we need a lev­el play­ing field game so we can have, I would say, rules that are con­stant and are fair for us to work to­geth­er.”

Stronger bal­ance sheet

Catal­do al­so point­ed to Dig­i­cel’s debt re­fi­nanc­ing as a key rea­son the com­pa­ny has greater ca­pac­i­ty to in­vest.

He said the group re­fi­nanced US$2.7 bil­lion in debt a year ago for a new sev­en-year term, with an in­ter­est rate 35 to 40 per cent low­er.

“We have a bet­ter cap­i­tal struc­ture that al­lows us to in­vest,” he said, “Our CEO in Trinidad, is the one tak­ing the shots and tak­ing the de­ci­sions there,” he said.

That ap­proach fits with the de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy out­lined in Catal­do’s memo, which placed greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in in­di­vid­ual mar­kets while seek­ing a lean­er group struc­ture.

Jobs fol­low growth

The net­work ex­pan­sion is trans­lat­ing in­to re­cruit­ment in T&T, with Catal­do say­ing in­creased sales are cre­at­ing de­mand for more peo­ple across the busi­ness.

“In Trinidad and To­ba­go, we are hir­ing be­cause we’re sell­ing more. So we need more sales­peo­ple. So we need more sup­port peo­ple, tech­ni­cians. We’re grow­ing our net­works.”

The hir­ing comes against the back­drop of last year’s re­struc­tur­ing, but Catal­do said the changes should not be in­ter­pret­ed as a blan­ket re­duc­tion of jobs across every op­er­a­tion.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly the com­pa­ny moves along AI, right siz­ing. There’s a lot of things go­ing on, but we are on the con­trary, in­vest­ing and grow­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Catal­do said the com­pa­ny is al­so in­vest­ing in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty as more busi­ness­es and pub­lic ser­vices move on­line. Dig­i­cel is work­ing with gov­ern­ments and com­pa­nies to iden­ti­fy their cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty needs, in­clud­ing the pol­i­cy frame­works re­quired to pro­tect dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture.

“Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty has to be built at the same time that you build your in­fra­struc­ture, not af­ter­wards,” he said.

He said T&T cus­tomers were in­creas­ing­ly seek­ing as­sis­tance in strength­en­ing their pro­tec­tion.

“We are en­gag­ing with a lot of cus­tomers that they want to un­der­stand how they can do bet­ter and to be pro­tect­ed.”

AI changes the game

Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence is be­com­ing a ma­jor part of Dig­i­cel’s op­er­a­tions, from net­work man­age­ment and pre­dic­tive main­te­nance to cus­tomer ser­vice.

Catal­do de­scribed AI as “an out­stand­ing tool that serves very dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es”.

For Catal­do, the cus­tomer-fac­ing ap­pli­ca­tions are par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant. Dig­i­cel’s AI cus­tomer ser­vice agent, Ru­by, is al­ready sup­port­ing be­tween 63 and 65 per cent of calls, Catal­do said.

Ru­by op­er­ates in Eng­lish and Dutch and is learn­ing re­gion­al lan­guages.

“It’s learn­ing Pa­tois, it’s learn­ing Pa­pi­a­men­to. And it is amaz­ing how we are serv­ing our cus­tomers.”

Catal­do high­light­ed AI was not sim­ply about mak­ing Dig­i­cel’s in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions more ef­fi­cient.

“So it’s not on­ly us­ing AI for us to do our job in a more ef­fi­cient way, but it’s al­so to serve our cus­tomers bet­ter.”

“You can­not stop cus­tomer be­hav­ior. You need to adapt,” Catal­do said.

Dig­i­cel’s re­sponse is to pro­vide the da­ta ca­pac­i­ty and net­work in­fra­struc­ture need­ed to sup­port those ser­vices.

“I don’t watch TV any­more. I would like to watch any of the stream­ing com­pa­nies. You go and do that. We will of­fer you,” Catal­do said.

“That’s why we are in­stalling in Trinidad and To­ba­go the ul­ti­mate fi­bre tech­nol­o­gy for you to en­joy your stream­ing ser­vices.”

Catal­do said the ear­li­er de­bate over whether large dig­i­tal plat­forms should con­tribute more to­wards telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work costs had moved in­to a dif­fer­ent phase.

“It’s closed in the US. It’s closed in Eu­rope,” he said, adding, “We de­serve a re­im­burse­ment for our net­works, yes. But we al­sounder­stand that the gov­ern­ment is mov­ing along; the reg­u­la­tion and every­thing is mov­ing along.”

His pri­or­i­ty is a fair reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment that gives telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies a long-term ba­sis for in­fra­struc­ture de­ploy­ment.

“And what we want is a fair reg­u­la­tion, long term view for us to de­ploy our in­fra­struc­ture,” he said.

Catal­do in­di­cat­ed that his fo­cus was on strength­en­ing Dig­i­cel’s ex­ist­ing 25 mar­kets rather than pur­su­ing im­me­di­ate ex­pan­sion.

For Catal­do, sus­tained in­vest­ment re­mains es­sen­tial even as cus­tomer be­hav­iour changes rapid­ly.

He said Dig­i­cel’s wider strat­e­gy was to close the dig­i­tal di­vide by in­vest­ing in in­fra­struc­ture and con­nect­ing more peo­ple.

“As we say, to close the dig­i­tal di­vide, you need to in­vest and you need to con­nect peo­ple,” Catal­do said.

For T&T, Catal­do’s mes­sage is straight­for­ward: the lo­cal op­er­a­tion is not con­tract­ing as part of the wider re­struc­tur­ing. It is hir­ing be­cause sales are in­creas­ing, ex­pand­ing be­cause cus­tomer de­mand is grow­ing and in­vest­ing be­cause the net­work needs to sup­port that growth.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go is all about in­vest­ment and growth,” Catal­do added.