The Tribune

The Bahamas Telecommunications Company’s (BTC) controlling owner yesterday conceded that its network quality “lags” much of the Caribbean and wider world, despite increasing its capital investment by 47 per cent last year.

Phil Bentley, Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) chief executive, told investment analysts that it was “racing” to get BTC’s network ready before the Government ended its mobile monopoly.

CWC, in presenting its results for the 12 months to end-March 2015, revealed data supplied by Ericsson showing that the Bahamas - and BTC - were “a challenged market” in every performance indicator in March 2014.

BTC was then ranked bottom of all CWC’s Caribbean territories, alongside Panama and Jamaica, as it was unable to meet its owner’s targets for less than 1 per cent dropped calls and greater than 99 per cent call/data set-up success rates.

Despite subsequent improvement, CWC’s data showed that BTC/the Bahamas “lags the region” in every performance indicator apart from 2G data throughput, where it is now on par with ‘best in class in the world’.

The Bahamas still remains locked with Panama and Jamaica at the bottom of CWC’s markets for network quality, an issue that will not aid its bid to retain some 318,000 mobile subscribers when its first-ever competitor enters the market.

“Our networks, frankly, were below par with slow speeds and prone to outages,” Mr Bentley said, having identified fixing the issue as his main priority when he took over as CWC chief executive in early 2014.

Acknowledging that progress had been made, Mr Bentley admitted “there is work to do”.

“Panama lags in certain areas, as does the Bahamas as we race to get the network ready for mobile competition,” the CWC chief said.

BTC’s network is thus ‘lagging’ despite a $75 million investment during the 12 months to end-March, which was designed to upgrade and modernise it in preparation for competition.

“Capital expenditure of $75 million was 47 per cent higher than the previous year, with 58 per cent of balance sheet investment geared towards expanding our 3G, HSPA+ and LTE (mobile/data) infrastructure, as well as expanding our Next Generation network and high speed DSL network,” CWC said of BTC.

Mr Bentley, meanwhile, added that BTC’s ‘net promoter score’, which measures customer satisfaction with BTC’s service, had improved by 13 points in 2015, one of the greater improvements across its Caribbean markets.

Still, Mr Bentley’s comments on network quality are likely to stun some observers, plus give encouragement to both Cable Bahamas and Virgin Mobile (Bahamas), the two bidders who are still vying for the second mobile licence.

However, CWC and BTC may have longer than they believe to prepare for competition, and the end to their lucrative monopoly, despite the former reiterating that the new entrant was expected to begin services before year-end.

“We continue to anticipate that a new mobile operator will enter the Bahamian market before the end of this calendar year, which will further adversely impact performance in 2015-2016,” CWC said yesterday.

However, Tribune Business has confirmed that it will be virtually impossible for the Government to announce the second mobile licence winner, and complete the formalities, by its previously-announced end-May deadline.

This is because the auction for spectrum that the winning bidder will use to operate their network, and deliver services to the public, has not been held yet.

Tribune Business understands that the auction, which was initially planned for earlier this month, was postponed/cancelled “very close” to the due date.

No explanation for this is understood to have been forthcoming, and the auction date is understood to have been rearranged for next week.

All this means it is unlikely that the second mobile provider will launch services by October/November 2015, as the Government had previously targeted, implying that competition may only finally arrive in 2016.

Elsewhere, CWC confirmed that it transferred 2 per cent of its BTC stake into the BTC Foundation on July 24, 2014.

It emphasised, though, that it remained the largest and controlling shareholder in BTC, with Board and management control.

“On 24 July, 2014, CWC completed the transfer of 2 per cent of its 51 per cent holding in BTC to the BTC Foundation, a charitable trust dedicated to investing in projects for the benefit of Bahamians,” CWC said.

“The 2 per cent shareholding is not entitled to any voting rights, and therefore CWC has retained majority voting rights in BTC as well as remaining the largest overall shareholder. CWC will maintain management and Board control of the business.

CWC added that the move “cemented our partnership with the Government of the Bahamas, and will ensure investment in good causes for the benefit of the Bahamian people”.