The newest entrant to the Barbados telecommunications market says it is not worried about competition from incumbents LIME and Digicel.
Moreover, FLOW said expansion of information and communications technology (ICT) was high on the company’s agenda. In an interview with the BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY, John Reid, the president and chief operating officer of Columbus Communications – FLOW’s parent company – and the incoming managing director of FLOW Barbados, Niall Sheehy, spoke about plans for further development of the sector.
Noting that he was optimistic about the Barbados market, Sheehy, who is outgoing business solutions manager for FLOW Jamaica, said the company was already prepared for any competition and had the network capacity.
He said they already had “a good” customer base from the acquisition of TeleBarbados and had pinpointed “a hunger” in the market for faster speeds and more bandwidth.
Saying that each market was unique and the challenges were different, Sheehy described the Barbados market as having a “sophisticated and educated” customer base.
Noting that the company had been trying to enter the Barbados market since 1998, Reid said it took more than a decade to set up operations because of difficulties in obtaining the necessary licences.
“It took Barbados a little longer to get to the point where [it] felt new entrants should be permitted,” he said.
However, he said now that FLOW had entered the market the next move was to capitalize on available opportunities while developing the sector.
“There is huge room for expansion. In terms of the market itself, the reality is that the business sector is undergoing a tremendous amount of transformation in terms of the ICT and we are here to help enable it,” Reid said. (MM)
