The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Aliv’s revenues are recovering from a “15 percent-plus” fall-off in April sparked by a “triple whammy” from the COVID-19 pandemic, the mobile operator’s top executive has revealed.

Damian Blackburn told Tribune Business that besides coping with a 30 percent increase in data demand that yielded minimal revenue growth, the cellular provider also had to invest in upgrading network capacity in residential areas due to the number of persons being temporarily laid-off or forced to work from home.

And he revealed that Aliv’s top-line took as further hit because around one-third of April was lost to the Easter and weekend lockdown restrictions, which meant subscribers were unable to access their regular top-up and plan purchasing points. And, with more persons confined at home and able to access Wi-fi, demand for plans also dropped below traditional levels.

“In terms of revenue, revenue was significantly down in April,” Mr Blackburn confirmed this newspaper. “People were at home more and the demand for some of the plans they normally buy was not as great. We are seeing a recovery in that situation as people are getting out and about more, and purchasing more data.

“We were, month-over-month, down kind of in the order of 15 percent-plus. It’s a slow recovery but it’s coming. We haven’t got through May yet. We are seeing people start to buy plans a bit more normally. The thing that was tough in April, I think, was that one-third of the days were completely all locked down and no business was open where customers traditionally top-up and buy their plans.

“We had a triple whammy of having to invest in infrastructure to provide more network capacity, and to get the capacity in the right place, less revenue and more data demand to cope with. We had that triple whammy which we were trying to balance together.”

Mr Blackburn, who confirmed that Aliv had brought back “a small number” of the 25 staff members furloughed as a result of COVID-19 through the partial re-opening of its retail network (three of seven New Providence locations for curb side and phone in), revealed that the mobile operator had made several adjustments to handle the pandemic’s fall-out.

“We had an increase in the demand for data. People are using about 30 percent more data on the network,” he disclosed. “It doesn’t translate into more revenue.” This, he explained, is because persons were frequently turning to Aliv’s My-fi wireless product to increase bandwidth and data capacity as a result of being confined at home with more persons using the service than normal.

Describing My-fi as a “supplemental service” for many households, Mr Blackburn added: “We’ve had to invest quite a lot in the network to make sure data capacity is increased where and when it’s needed. On a normal pattern you need more data where people are working and less where they are at home.

“It’s the other way around now. The engineers have done a great job deploying a lot more capacity where it’s required. As ever, the teams executed tremendously and have done a great job.” Mr Blackburn was unable to provide a dollar figure for the latest investment in Aliv’s network, but said it likely ran into “several hundred thousand”.