By NATARIO

McKENZIE

Tribune Business

Reporter

nmckenzie@

tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) expects to be “well positioned” to win back market share in the fixed-line Internet broadband market via its Next Generation Network (NGN), the company’s chief executive telling Tribune Business it will invest a further $20-$30 million “to bring it to market”.

Addressing the progress of the NGN network roll-out, Geoff Houston told Tribune Business: “The NGN network situation is much more complicated, and we have spent quite a lot of money re-engineering how we do it.

“We have got a formula now which is going to allow us to bring it to market. You are talking about cutting across 127,000 exchange lines. We have probably got through 5,000-6,000 already. That’s going to take us a year to accomplish all that, but when we finish it, in the majority of places people will be able to get access to top high speed broadband on their existing phone lines.”

Mr Houston added: “Before Cable and Wireless arrived, BTC had already made a significant investment in its NGN. BTC had already invested $50 million-plus.

“We will invest another $20-$30 million to bring it to market. What BTC hadn’t achieved was bringing it to market. We have figured out how to do that, and now we are wrapping that up.

“We have to win back market share. The business had lost a lot of that market to competition, so we are definitely in ‘win back’ mode. When you look at our pricing, which is half the price of the competition, that’s a clear signal that we are intent on winning back our market share. Our network is going to provide high speed broadband to a broader range of customers in more areas, and I think it’s going to get us really well positioned to start winning back that market share.”

Mr Houston said that despite the initial outcry during the introduction of the EzTopUp system, the phone card/TopUp distribution has “gone down” well.

“That was not an easy thing to accomplish, but I feel that we have been able to work constructively with the distribution channels to effect that change,” said Mr Houston.

“The customers are using EzTopUp a lot more than we anticipated, so more than half of our TopUp business is now coming off the EzTopUp platform, which tells me that customers wanted it. Obviously the card business is there, but that whole re-engineering of the card/TopUp distribution has gone down quite well,”   

Mr Houston said BTC has seen success with its smart phone sales. He added: “Before we launched 4G, 3 per cent of our sales were on smart phones. Today, nearly half of our business is on smart phones, so the Bahamian customer is moving quickly to that smart phone technology. It’s been quite phenomenal; we feel the whole transformation of the market.”