KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While COVID-19 has forced busi­ness­es to re­duce cost; some sac­ri­fic­ing their in­ter­net and ca­ble plans, shifts to work from home and on­line school­ing have led to Flow Trinidad record­ing its high­est broad­band sub­scrip­tion ever.

Flow Trinidad’s coun­try man­ag­er Kurleigh Prescod said that the end of 2020, the com­pa­ny’s broad­band sub­scrip­tion was well over 100,000, in­di­cat­ing a 5 per cent growth in a year when many com­pa­nies suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant loss­es. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the open­ing of Flow Trinidad’s Gulf City Cen­tre, Prescod said many busi­ness­es had to close be­cause of last year’s COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

As com­mer­cial cus­tomers cut costs, it meant Flow Trinidad lost some busi­ness. Prescod said Flow Trinidad worked with many com­mer­cial cus­tomers to re­duce their pack­ages or us­age to help them nav­i­gate the chal­leng­ing econ­o­my. Some cus­tomers dis­con­tin­ued their plans while oth­ers could not ser­vice their bills.

But with the clo­sure of schools caus­ing chil­dren to en­gage in on­line class­es and many busi­ness­es al­low­ing their em­ploy­ees to work from home, there was an in­creased de­mand for res­i­den­tial con­nec­tions.

“We had peo­ple need­ing in­ter­net con­nec­tions for their chil­dren to study or for them to work from home. So we have seen a sort of two-sided ef­fect. It was a net pos­i­tive for us where we were able to record our high­est broad­band sub­scribers ever in our op­er­a­tion by the end of last year,” Prescod said.

In South Trinidad, Flow Trinidad added over 2000 new cus­tomers and up­grad­ed its ser­vice to those clients by mov­ing its op­er­a­tion from Kei­th Street, San Fer­nan­do to Gulf City Mall, La Ro­maine. The new lo­ca­tion has ad­e­quate park­ing, com­pared to the old spot, and there is an ad­di­tion­al pay­ment op­tion, mak­ing the usu­al long lines a thing of the past. There is now a self-pay­ment kiosk out­side the store that ac­cepts cash and cred­it or visa deb­it card pay­ments. Prescod said this means that cus­tomers can pay their bills quick­ly, whether or not the cen­tre is open. 

“It is al­most like an ATM so once the mall is open and you are here, even if our store is not open and you’re on your way to work, you can pay your bill. If you reach too late and the store is al­ready closed, you can still pay your bill as long as the mall is open.”

In­side the store, there are ad­di­tion­al cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ty desks where clients can re­view their bills and check out the var­i­ous prod­ucts. 

Prescod said that as Flow Trinidad’s clien­tele grew, it up­grad­ed its sys­tems to ac­com­mo­date the in­creased traf­fic. He said Flow Trinidad has a sound po­si­tion in the mar­ket, and in 2021, the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to in­vest in up­grad­ing its sys­tems.