The Tribune

CABLE Bahamas announced a “quantum leap forward” which will see REVON broadband Internet subscribers enjoy an increase in speeds of more than 500 per cent.

The improvement comes with no change in costs to any of the company’s existing levels of service, Cable Bahamas said in a statement.

The company also announced an entirely new offering that will be released in the coming weeks and that will deliver up to 70 megabits per second Internet access.

REVON broadband Internet customers will receive the new speed offerings starting Monday, April 22 in New Providence and Grand Bahama, and Monday, May 20 in Abaco and Eleuthera.

As the company that first introduced ‘always on’ broadband Internet service to the Bahamas in 2000, this evolution of broadband services was a natural progression, enabled by Cable Bahamas’ extensive fibre-optic network, the company said in a statement.

“We are reaping the rewards of great planning and design,” said vice president of engineering John Gomez. “Because of the way we designed our network, we can continually expand and deliver the technology that our customers demand. That foundation has enabled us to adapt and grow as needs change, without having to rebuild on top of old technology.”

Head of marketing at Cable Bahamas David Burrows announced the specific speed levels as follows: REVON subscribers receiving three megabits per second service will be upgraded to a new service level of up to 15 megabits per second; subscribers currently at six megabits per second will receive up to 30 megabits per second; and, those currently receiving nine megabits per second will get up to 50 megabits per second.

Mr Burrows emphasised that the first level of service the company is providing will now be five times faster than what they currently experience.

In addition, Mr Burrows announced an entirely new residential level of service.

“We are excited to announce our newest broadband service, REVON Extreme, which will debut in the coming weeks which will deliver mind-blowing speeds of up to 70 megabits per second,” Mr Burrows said. “This is what might be available in the major cities of North America, Asia or Europe. It’s the kind of performance that is beyond anything that has been seen for residential subscribers in the Bahamas before.

“These speed increases are the most dramatic change seen in the Bahamas since households and businesses moved from cumbersome dial-up to Cable Bahamas’ broadband Internet,” claimed Mr Burrows.

“We have always been the market leader in the Bahamas for Internet access ever since we first introduced broadband to the country in 2000. When DSL finally came along, the phone line-based service offered just 1 megabit per second, while we were offering three, six and nine megabits per second speeds. Today, we’ve set a whole new standard for speed that is unsurpassable.”

Mr Burrows said that Cable Bahamas has made prudent and careful decisions throughout its technology evolution, and those decisions helped secure the BISX-listed company’s continued position as the market leader for the foreseeable future.

When asked what motivated the company to increase their Internet speeds so significantly, Mr Burrows, who also heads up product development and management of the REVON product, explained that the demands of subscribers today are dramatically more than just a few years ago.

Internet usage, the company claims, does not just increase with each user that comes online, but it is the increasing number of devices that are running Internet-intensive applications at the same time in the household.

“Our lives have changed so much,” Mr Burrows said. “A typical family of three or four people can easily have multiple Internet-connected devices in their home. We’ve got desktop and laptop computers, tablets, smart phones, music players, smart TVs, and video game consoles, all connected to a single home network. A recent international study showed that iPad usage here in the Bahamas is ninth highest per capita in the world – we love our Internet and smart devices, and with these new speeds, Cable Bahamas’ customers can have the confidence that we will more than meet those demands.

“YouTube, Facebook, online video games, data backups, remote applications, and streaming audio and HD video services demand more speed and require a network with the capacity to handle it. Anything less than 10 megabits per second is simply inadequate to meet the needs of Bahamian families in the future.”

He added that all REVON commercial Internet subscribers, using both cable modems and those with premium fibre optic-based service, will also see across-the-board increases in speed and performance, up to 500 megabits per second, previously unheard of broadband Internet speeds in the business sector in The Bahamas.

Cable Bahamas’ engineers, support teams and technicians have been involved in intensive training and preparation for the launch of REVON’s new broadband Internet speeds, which began in late 2011. This work has gone from lab testing to real-world trials, which have confirmed the reliability and robust nature of the telecommunications company’s network.

“The transfer of knowledge and raising the bar among our technical and support teams has been critical in ensuring that we understand the true range of our network,” said Mr Gomez. “As a 100 per cent Bahamian company, it is vitally important that we set a new standard within our own ranks. This means that more of our own people are not only designing and creating these new advances, but we are also the ones managing it for our future.”