By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) is aiming to use its new TV product “to gain a market leading Internet position”, its chief executive yesterday saying the company should never have let its broadband share drop to 25 per cent.

Confirming that the newly-privatised carrier would go head-to-head with Cable Bahamas in the latter’s core market before Christmas 2013, Geoff Houston said there was “a big chunk of the market” that the BISX-listed company is failing to serve.

Noting that BTC’s extensive network infrastructure enabled it to reach parts of the Bahamas rival carriers could not, Mr Houston said its TV product would enable the company to go one step further than Cable Bahamas and offer consumers “quadruple” - not Triple - Play.

Arguing that BTC was already winning back former Cable Bahamas customers via its upgraded broadband Internet product, Mr Houston said it had been limited in regaining market share to-date because just 25,000 lines were connected to its Next Generation Network (NGN).

And he pledged to shake-up the “complacency embedded” in the Bahamian broadband Internet market within just a few months, via BTC’s product and pricing package.

“I would say the TV is the second half of the year,” Mr Houston told Tribune Business, when asked when BTC was likely to launch its rival product to Cable Bahamas.

“We’re trialling it right now, and putting the commercial plan and technical plan together. Certainly, we will have it on the market for 2013. It will be multiple millions of dollars invested in this one.”

Disclosing that BTC’s TV product would have more than 100 channels, including the likes of HBO and ESPN, Mr Houston said the launch would leverage the carrier’s existing NGN network and “very affordable broadband package”.

BTC’s immediate parent, LIME, the Caribbean subsidiary of Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC), has already launched TV services in Barbados and Jamaica. This will enable the Bahamian carrier to draw on the programming, technical expertise and existing contracts held by its parent.

Cable Bahamas has largely cemented its grip on the Bahamian cable TV market via the previous 15-year exclusivity it held, the company having around 75,000 subscribers. Its main competition to-date has been satellite TV, but Mr Houston is not deterred in his belief that BTC can win significant market share.

He told Tribune Business: “There’s certainly a big chunk of the market not served at all by Cable Bahamas, which we have the ability to serve.

“That is a big underserved market. We’ve found it all over the Family Islands, even in New Providence as well. There are lots of Family Islands that are desperate for a TV product.

“The [Cable Bahamas] product is not so ubiquitous as some people think, so there’s a gap we can fill as our network reaches more people than anyone else.”

And Mr Houston added: “I think we can use it [the TV launch] to leverage our broadband Internet into a market-leading position.

“In the areas where we go head-to-head with Cable Bahamas, we’re winning a lot of Cable Bahamas customers back. The majority of customers we are winning are coming from Cable Bahamas.

“What we don’t have is a wide enough distribution to go big scale, because only 25,000 lines are connected on to the broadband platform. But we will have a lot more in 12 months, and become a significant player in the broadband market in the Bahamas,” Mr Houston added.

“For the first time, there will be real competition for broadband Internet. It’s going to be an interesting battle. There is an element of complacency that is embedded in that broadband arena, and we will shake it out in the next few months as people become aware of the products we’ve got and the pricing we’ll set.”

Mr Houston told Tribune Business that upon acquiring a majority 51 per cent stake in BTC in April 2011, CWC found it had less than a 25 per cent share of the Bahamian broadband Internet market, and less than a 40 per cent share of the business market for all communications services.

“Being an incumbent telephone company, it should never have reached that position, and what we’ve done is arrested the market share decline,” Mr Houston told Tribune Business.

He added that BTC had now built a dedicated sales organisation focused on the business community, with 12-14 young Bahamians employed to “take on that challenge”.

While Cable Bahamas is offering Bahamian consumers a ‘Triple Play’ proposition, following the launch of its ReVoice fixed landline service, it does not have a cellular product yet thanks to BTC’s ongoing monopoly.

“We can offer Quadruple Play because we have mobile attached to that as well,” Mr Houston told Tribune Business.

And, with BTC set to launch its LTE network later this year, providing consumers with speeds 10 times’ faster than 4G, the possibility for mobile TV - accessed via cell phones - looms large in the future.

Earlier, Mr Houston had told the Bahamas Business Outlook conference that post-privatisation BTC had accomplished “five years of work in two years”, and still had not finished.

Referring to service problems that had plagued the transition to a 4G network, Mr Houston told BTC’s customers: “We realise it’s been a frustrating journey for you as well. We’ve come through the worst of it.”