The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas Telecommunications Company’s (BTC) chief executive says the company has reached “the red line” on mobile subscriber loss and value, and is readying the fight back.

Garfield “Garry” Sinclair told Tribune Business that BTC must “reorient” itself and its two trade unions to be more “customer centric” as it prepares to roll-out some “very compelling” consumer value propositions (CVPs).

“One of the sort of commercial muscles that have sort of atrophied when we were the sole provider, particularly of mobile services, is customer centricity. You have to be customer centric in an intensely competitive environment. The first thing we have to do is reorient everyone in the business, including my union partners,” he said.

“My union partners are clearly focused on their colleagues, and I have made it clear that my job is taking care of my colleagues. As a commercial imperative, the first line of business is taking care of customers. Customers have to be at the centre of what we do, and so we have to reorient the business to do that.

“We have to put the customer first, and that is what I am trying to inculcate back into our DNA. That extends now to developing customer value propositions. We have to ask them what they want and then develop customer value propositions accordingly.”

BTC’s subscriber numbers at September 30, 2018, support claims by rival Aliv to have seized more than one-third of all Bahamian mobile market subscribers. BTC was shown to have 228,300 total subscribers at that date, with 89 percent of 203,000 of that client base concentrated in pre-paid customers.

Damian Blackburn, Aliv’s top executive, pegged its subscriber base at 125,000 which, when combined with BTC’s numbers, gives The Bahamas’ second mobile operator a 35.4 percent market share - placing it on track to hit its target of 39 percent share by end-June 2019.

BTC’s once-lucrative mobile monopoly generated almost three-quarters of its annul revenues, along with the bulk of its profits, and it has been unable to make inroads into Cable Bahamas’ TV and Internet dominance to compensate for the market share loss to Aliv.

Liberty Latin America (LiLAC), BTC’s ultimate parent, recently expressed hope that its mobile subscriber loss “will bottom out in 2019” after another 12,400 customers exited in this year’s third quarter.

Balan Nair, Liberty Latin America’s (LiLAC) chief executive, told financial analysts that while this point was getting “closer and closer”, BTC was “not there yet” in terms of stemming the bleeding of subscribers to Aliv.

He, though, downplayed the continued erosion of BTC’s mobile market share as “natural” for a newly-liberalised market such as The Bahamas where the former state-owned incumbent had enjoyed a 16-year monopoly.

Mr Sinclair told Tribune Business: “We are about to launch some very compelling fixed and mobile CVPs, and we have adjusted the way of promoting them as well, which I think will resonate with customers. We have gone out there and listened to customers and began inculcating our new customer centric culture in the business.”

He added: “While we are market leaders in fixed-voice, that’s a structurally declining business. That business is heading south. The younger crowd wants mobility. In fixed broadband, we are only at 30 per cent market share there, so we never competed very well.

“On the television side, that is being disrupted by over the top providers, NETFLIX and consumers watching on demand, and even there we only had 10 per cent of the share. That’s a part of the adjustment we need to make.

“On the mobile side we had 100 per cent of the market and, in fairness, there was nowhere to go but down. We need to draw a red line in the sand. We have about reached that red line; not just on subscriber numbers but on value as well. We’re going to hold the line there. We want to hang on to customers we want to hang on to, and get back customers into the fold.”