The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

CABLE Bahamas said yesterday that it was looking to add another 1,500 customers to its broadband network, executives noting that the company had gained a 26 per cent market share in landline services in just two years.

The company yesterday announced that it would increase internet upload and download speed for its broadband subscribers.

Cable Bahamas’ director of marketing David Burrows said that the BISX-listed triple play provider had over 52,000 broadband subscribers to-date which represents between 75-80 per cent of the local broadband market.

Cable Bahamas also yesterday that it has implemented a network-wide increase in upload speeds for all residential REVON broadband Internet subscribers and has implemented a 33 per cent increase in download speed for REVON Charge broadband subscribers, moving from 15Mb/s to 20Mb/s.

The company said that upload speed increases range from 400 per cent to 700 per cent over the previously provided speeds. In April last year, when it increased download speeds from 3,6 and 9Mb/s to 15, 30 and 50Mb/s respectively, and launched a new service level at 70Mb/s, the change moved the Bahamas’ national average download speed from 5.53Mb/s to 13.32Mb/s in less than a month.

“The entire investment was somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million and tens of thousands of man hours for sure,” said Mr Burrows. “We’re hoping to get another 1,500 customers just with this broadband increase. We’re in a market that is extremely highly penetrated right now. With such a high penetration right now massive growth is not expected. We are doing it for a number of reasons. The technology demands that you have these types of speeds. You’re not just looking at future customers but we’re looking at our existing customers and what their demands are and their demands change every single day.”

Assessing the land-line market Mr Burrows said: “Quite frankly I would like to get to 50 per cent of landline services. Today we are at 26 per cent, we have about 26,000 customers. We certainly made a dent. We see that as a very promising start. What we have already accomplished is a higher increase than other voice companies coming into an already existing market and being able to gain the type of share that we have gained.”

He noted that the market share takeout in such instances was usually on two-to-seven per cent. “We are at 26 per cent and we’re only two years in. We’re a smaller market but we’re still talking percentages.”