An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Come the first of next month, Flow cus­tomers will face an in­crease in their month­ly ca­ble and in­ter­net pack­ages of four per cent.

This was an­nounced by the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny yes­ter­day.

It said this price ad­just­ment will al­low Flow to con­tin­ue to in­vest in its net­work and oth­er nec­es­sary im­prove­ments need­ed to meet and ex­ceed cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions.

“We’ve been work­ing hard in the back­ground to bet­ter serve our cus­tomers and keep them al­ways con­nect­ed. We have been stead­fast in our ef­forts to run an ef­fi­cient busi­ness and keep our costs down, while in­vest­ing mil­lions in our net­work to im­prove our ser­vice and add more val­ue for our cus­tomers with in­no­v­a­tive prod­ucts,” the com­pa­ny ex­plained.

Flow not­ed that cus­tomers with pack­age speeds of 100Mbps and 150Mbps will en­joy an ad­di­tion­al 25 Mbps in down­load speed for free! and this speed in­crease will al­so take ef­fect from April 1.

Some of the af­fect­ed pack­ages in­clude the fol­low­ing:  

• The Con­nect­ed Pre­mi­um bun­dle, which is now $516.50, would now be $537.10;

• The Choice 300 bun­dle is now $408.99, would soon cost $425.35;

• The Broad­band 75 bun­dle which is cur­rent­ly $305.35, is ex­pect­ed to in­crease to $317.55; and

• Flow Ul­tra Plus bun­dle that now cost $574.99, will in­crease to $612.35.

Flow’s last in­crease was May 1, 2023, when in­ter­net and ca­ble in­creased by 3.5 per cent.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Dig­i­cel+ to en­quire if it was mov­ing in a sim­i­lar di­rec­tion. In re­sponse, the com­pa­ny said, “We con­stant­ly eval­u­ate our prod­uct of­fer­ing, giv­en the changes in the mar­ket con­di­tions and that we will be mak­ing some ad­just­ments to out pack­ages, where some cus­tomers would even see some re­duc­tions in their pack­ages and oth­ers would see re­vised pric­ing mod­els. In the com­ing weeks, Dig­i­cel will re­lease more in­for­ma­tion on this.”

Am­plia Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, which is 100 per cent owned by Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (TSTT), al­so re­spond­ed to Guardian’s query, “At this time, Am­plia has no planned price in­creas­es for its suite of ser­vices. We are fo­cused on ex­pand­ing our fi­bre net­work, en­hanc­ing our ser­vice of­fer­ings, and pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with ex­cep­tion­al val­ue.

“Over the last nine months, Am­plia has in­vest­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in its fi­bre de­ploy­ment in both Trinidad and To­ba­go to en­sure that more peo­ple have ac­cess to our com­pet­i­tive and cus­tomiz­able high-qual­i­ty broad­band ser­vices. In the com­ing year, Am­plia will con­tin­ue to in­vest in ex­pand­ing its fi­bre net­work cov­er­age while keep­ing its pulse on the needs of its grow­ing cus­tomer base.”

Cus­tomers are not pleased by Flow’s de­ci­sion to in­crease its rates.

Nor­man Mar­tin from Tu­na­puna told Guardian Me­dia, he was not pleased by the news as this re­cent in­crease is hap­pen­ing 11 months af­ter the last year’s price hike.

“Peo­ple just can­not get a break. Every month there is the an­nounce­ment of a price in­crease. Peo­ple would nev­er be able to live on a prop­er salary.”

Cherisse Matthews of Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain said Flow’s ser­vice has not been the best over the past few months and she hopes this will im­prove when the price in­creas­es next month.

Last week Tues­day, Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd con­firmed that KFC, one of its fran­chise op­er­a­tions in T&T, had in­creased its prices by be­tween three to five per cent.

Prices of KFC meals in­creased by be­tween $1 and $2 in De­cem­ber 2023

Ques­tioned about the price hike at the pop­u­lar fast-food restau­rant chain, Pres­tige Hold­ings chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Si­mon Hardy, ex­plained that the price in­crease was due to the in­crease in min­i­mum wage, which took ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, as well as price in­creas­es from sup­pli­ers.

“The main jump for us was the min­i­mum wage as we em­ploy 3,300 peo­ple. We on­ly made the changes on Feb­ru­ary 22. But in­evitably, a busi­ness such as ours can’t, with an em­ploy­ee base such as ours, hold those prices for­ev­er. Just mak­ing a lit­tle com­par­i­son, you know. Every­one thinks that there’s a lot of prof­it be­ing made. We are a high-sales busi­ness but a low-mar­gin busi­ness, on­ly 4.2 per cent of our sales is prof­it. So, we have a lot of sales, but it’s not a lot of prof­it,” he said.

In Jan­u­ary, Star­bucks (whose par­ent com­pa­ny is al­so Pres­tige Hold­ings), Roy­al Cas­tle, Rit­u­als, and Blue Wa­ters in­creased their prices.

All the com­pa­nies cit­ed that those hikes were due to the in­crease in min­i­mum wage from $17.50 to $20.50 and the in­crease in in­put costs.