By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Digicel will ultimately become a “full service provider” in the Bahamian communications market if it wins the second cellular licence, as it attacks this process with “full gusto”.

Frank O’Carroll, Digicel’s head of business development, confirmed to Tribune Business that the mobile specialist would use its cellular business as a ‘springboard’ to enter other communications segments if everything went to plan.

He confirmed that Digicel has already sought to obtain a broadband Internet licence from the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA), and was only waiting for “one of the final approvals to come through”.

“Certainly, there was spectrum identified for us to do certain things,” Mr O’Carroll said, adding that Digicel would “absolutely” seek to leverage a Bahamian cellular licence to expand into other areas.

“In every market we operate in, as it goes through the stages of liberalisation, we participate fully,” he told Tribune Business. “Our ultimate goal is to be a full service provider, and that’s why we’re supporting this stage with full gusto.”

Digicel is already employing this model in Jamaica, where it has recently acquired several cable pay-TV companies. Assuming it follows the same template, one can imagine it ultimately going head-to-head with Cable Bahamas and the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) in other areas should its mobile bid be successful.

Mr O’Carroll, though, indicated that if Digicel failed to become the second operator then it would not be interested in bidding on a third Bahamian licence should that ever be made available.

The tender document for the second cellular licence reveals that the Government intends to amend the Communications Sector Policy so that a third operator cannot enter the Bahamian market until three years after the second one has begun operations.

This means a third entrant would not arrive until late 2018 at earliest, and will face the daunting task of having to compete against two entrenched operators. And, as the tender makes clear, there are significant doubts over whether the Bahamas’ population is big enough to support a third operator.

Mr O’Carroll suggested that if a third cellular operator did materialise, it would likely be a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) - a business model that is not Digicel’s.

Such an operator would rent space on an existing carrier’s network to carry its consumers’ traffic, meaning it is effectively re-selling the latter’s minutes.