The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) is targeting the business and video markets to “fight back” against Cable Bahamas, having already installed its new TV product for the 12 sets in Prime Minister Perry Christie’s Cable Beach home.

Phil Bentley, Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) chief executive, yesterday revealed that BTC would launch its new IPTV product in August/September this year, bolstered by set top box technology acquired through its parent’s purchase of the FLOW business from Columbus Communications.

He expressed confidence that its BTC subsidiary possessed comparable technology, and superior products, to its BISX-listed rival via the Internet Protocol (IP) TV offering and its B2B (business to business) category.

“We’re putting fibre fast into the Bahamas marketplace in the meantime,” Mr Bentley told London-based investment analysts yesterday, during a conference call to discuss CWC’s results for the quarter to end-June.

“We’ll be looking to launch our new IPTV FLOW set-top box in August/September, and that’s how we start to fight back in both the B2B broadband and video markets.”

BTC is aggressively cutting rates across all product categories as it prepares for the loss of its last monopoly in the mobile segment, and arrival of competition.

Its broadband Internet offering has not been immune from this, as subscriber growth during the quarter to end-June 2015 was offset by lower revenue per subscriber “due to promotional strategies aimed at increasing market share” against Cable Bahamas.

Mr Bentley was specifically asked by analysts “how your offers are going to compete against Cable Bahamas going forward” on IPTV, and “how you hope to win back some share there”.

The CWC chief, who represents BTC’s controlling shareholder, was also grilled on how the latter’s technology “stands up” against its BISX-listed competitor, and if it can “turn the tide” on fixed-line services.

“On the Bahamas, we are rolling out fibre as well, so we’re not just doing VSL in the last mile,” Mr Bentley replied. “We are doing some fibre to the home in Freeport and in Nassau, so we’ll have a competitive technology and competitive speeds.”

He then added: “I think the key for us is in two areas. One is in B2B, where we’ve not had the speeds or, frankly, the reliability that we have now. Nor, indeed, the ability to really provide good 24/7 monitoring.

“What we are doing on the B2B side is we are going to be much more actively involved in the management of the NOC (network operations centre) in the Bahamas.

“We’re going to be integrating it with our NOC in Miami, and we have obviously got, we think, a much better product there, whether it’s financial services, hotels and banks, especially branch networks. So B2B is an area we are going to be focusing on.”

Turning to the second part of his strategy to grow BTC’s market share, attack Cable Bahamas and compensate for much-reduced mobile revenues, Mr Bentley said: “The other side is the set top box.

“We think that with out set top box we have got more channels, we have got more high definition, we’ve got cloud, we’ve got catch-up TV.

“We have already put it into the Prime Minister’s house with his 12 television sets, and all the feedback we have had from the early trials of the TV is that it is a superior product to Cable Bahamas, particularly so where we have focused in some of the islands where Cable Bahamas has not put out a network as well.

“That’s how we’re building up the brand presence on the TV side.”

BTC’s IPTV penetration into the Family Islands has been a relatively smooth exercise, given that it has built upon its existing network to launch a product in sparsely populated areas for which there is no rival. It has, in other words, been an ‘easy sell’.

BTC will have a much harder job in gaining TV market share on islands such as New Providence, Grand Bahama and Abaco, where Cable Bahamas is entrenched via its 15-year monopoly.

The carrier will thus endure a long, hard road to win market share and extra revenues to compensate for the loss of its mobile monopoly.

The pressures from increased competition, which is set to arrive imminently, have shrunk BTC’s revenue per subscriber across all product categories.

For mobile, BTC’s monthly revenue per subscriber has fallen has dropped by some 12 per cent since June 2014, and 4.7 per cent since March 31, to finish at $57.1 at end-June 2015.

The same trend was repeated in the broadband Internet category, where the monthly revenue per subscriber dropped to $45.60 at end-June 2015.

This was down almost 17 per cent from the $54.80 that was being earned the year before, and also a decline from the $48.50 generated at March 31 this year.

Fixed-line is the only segment to remain relatively steady. Monthly revenues per subscriber hit $38.80 for the quarter ended in June, up slightly from the $37.10 generated at the same time last year, but down from the $43.50 earned in the quarter to end-March 2015.

BTC’s declining yields are offsetting higher volumes from increased subscriber numbers.

Broadband subscribers were up at 26,000 at end-June 2015, improving from 25,000 at end-March and 24,000 at the same point last year.

Mobile subscribers, meanwhile, were slightly down from the March 31 year-end, standing at 315,000 at end-June compared to 318,000. They were, though, higher than the 308,000 on BTC’s books at end-June 2014.

Fixed-line subscriber numbers, though, continue to decline, falling from 103,000 at June 2014 to 99,000 at March 31, 2015, and 95,000 at end-June.