The Tribune

By NATARIO MCKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas Telecommunications Company’s (BTC) chief executive says the launch of its television product is “back on the agenda”, expressing confidence that the company would get it to market within the next 12 months.

Geoff Houston, speaking after a presentation to the Rotary Club of East Nassau, told Tribune Business: “We have always had that plan. I wanted to try and get it into the market sooner, but when we looked at the enormous amount of work that we had to do just to fix up the business and the network, that’s [TV] slipped down the agenda.

“But that’s certainly back on the agenda for BTC, and I’m very confident that in the next 12 months we will get a TV product to the market,” he added.

“We haven’t finalised how much the investment is going to be. We still have a bit more work to do with the supplier and the type of content we want to buy. All those issues have to be worked out before we can understand what our retail strategy will be, and what our content strategy will be.”

Nevertheless, Mr Houston said BTC would ultimately have to invest “multiple millions of dollars” to deploy its proposed TV product across the entire Bahamas.

He added that the delay in the product launch had been somewhat “fortuitous”, as the company had placed significant focus on building up its Next Generation Network (NGN) for fixed-line broadband, which will allow for a TV product offering.

“We are almost finished that, and that will give us more of a focused mindset when we look at TV. With that kind of focus we will get it into market in the next 12 months,” Mr Houston said.

He added that by the end of March, BTC will have migrated all its fixed- line infrastructure to its new NGN network.