Flow Saint Lucia - Leading the Digital Transformation

FLOW SAINT LUCIA

LEADING THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MAGAZINE

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INTERVIEW: FLOW SAINT LUCIA

LEADING

THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Sustainable Business Magazine speaks to Chris Williams, General Manager at Flow Saint Lucia, about their investments in new technology, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on customers behavior, and the company’s commitment to supporting Saint Lucians throughout challenging times.

By Daniel Baksi More than fifty years have passed since Flow, then operating under the name Cable and Wireless, replaced Saint Lucia Telephone as the provider of ordinary fixed-line, telex, and telegraph services to the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. From these humble beginnings, via an interim rebrand as LIME and an acquisition by Liberty Global, the company has blossomed into Saint Lucia’s first and only quad-play provider. High-speed internet, LTE mobile technology, hybrid quadcell fiber TV, and voice services complete Flow’s offering to the island’s 180,000-strong population, coupled with high-speed direct internet access and high-speed data service provision for Saint Lucia’s commercial sector.

INVESTING IN QUALITY Flow Saint Lucia has recently embarked on a process of bundling its services, offering its customers the opportunity to combine products in return for better all-round value.

“We first began the process of packaging our products together about two years ago,” says Chris Williams, General Manager at Flow Saint Lucia. “It’s something we’ve very heavily invested in, to give customers 2 | SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MAGAZINE

more consolidated services. We have double, triple, and quad-play offerings, meaning that the more products and services you have with us, the more benefits you receive.

For that, our penetration rate is pretty close to 20%, and we’re looking to increase it to about 25% by the end of the quarter.

Additionally, we’ve also incorporated Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) into that, delivering seamless connectivity to our customers across fixed and mobile systems.”

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INTERVIEW: FLOW SAINT LUCIA

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All of this has been underpinned by Flow’s investment in the transition from a largely copper infrastructure to hybrid fiber-coaxial. “That’s been our major project for the last two years, allowing us to move from an average speed of 2Mbps to a minimum of 25Mbps per second – almost twelve times faster for our entry level offering,” explains Mr. Williams. “Included in that project was the expansion of our Nokia Distributed Access Architecture (DAA) footprint with the latest technology on fiber-coaxial cable. This allows us to reach speeds as high as 1Gbps.

We will roll that out across the entire island by the beginning of next year, allowing our customers to benefit from the reliability benefits it brings.”

ACCELERATING DEMAND With the imposition of government-mandated lockdowns due to COVID-19 on the island, Flow Saint Lucia have seen significant shifts in customer behaviour. “The pandemic has accelerated the investment in remote payments and remote services,” explains Mr. Williams. “We’ve launched our Fastpay service, giving our customers a quick, secure, and easy-to-use bill payment option. On top of that, one of the main ways in which we believe we’ve changed for good is with the launch of our virtual store. During the initial lockdown, customers still needed services, including topping-up, or issues with their billing, or others needed to upgrade their speeds or add broadband services they didn’t have before. For us to deliver those services, we felt that the virtual store was a real necessity. Customers would send in their request or complaint using WhatsApp, and we would route that to our dispatch, and co-ordinate with them depending on whether they needed service installation, remote upgrades, or bill payments. The virtual store has been a big benefit: it allows our staff to work remotely and our customers like it. It’s a fundamental change in the way we do business, and not one we think is going to change.”

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INTERVIEW: FLOW SAINT LUCIA

“WE’LL BE LOOKING TO IMPLEMENT EVEN MORE ATTRACTIVE PROPOSITIONS, WITH EVEN BETTER PRICING AND EVEN BIGGER BENEFITS.”

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SUPPORTING SAINT LUCIANS During the pandemic, Flow has also continued supporting our communities.

“We don’t see ourselves as just another communications company,” explains Mr. Williams. “We see ourselves as an essential service, because we support a number of mission-critical applications, whether it’s banking, finance, real-time transfers, or life-saving medical equipment. During the pandemic, we considered how as a company we could facilitate our government in keeping our customers connected.

With our students forced to start online learning, one of things we did was enable free access to our Flow Study platform for all our customers, a policy that we continued for about a period of about four to five months.

At the same time, the government had a series of quarantine facilities throughout the island, where we enabled connectivity at no at no cost. We also provided a series of tollfree numbers, so customers could call those facilities free of charge.”

In facilitating the Saint Lucian government’s COVID-19 response, Flow has built upon a strong track-record of community support. “We’re a perennial charitable contributor in so many different ways,” says Mr. Williams. “For our annual mission week, held late last year, we gave free home internet for the duration of the school year to almost 50 students island-wide. That program began in November and will continue until the end of the school year, in July 2021. Of those students, some had absolutely no previous connectivity, and we had to do the whole installation. For others who already had con-

nectivity, we did not charge for the services.

We also supported homeless charities, meals programs, as well as any additional support as required by the government to assist with education and youth. We recognize that we play an important role and we’re committed to our country and our people.”

As attention turns to a post-pandemic future, Flow is lining up further investments in infrastructure. “The next move will be: launch fiber to the home,” says Mr. Williams. “That will bring many benefits to our customers, including faster broadband speeds, enabling shorter download times, enhanced streaming, and the use of several devices simultaneously. It’ll also result in improvements to our cable TV and fixed-line services. As we’ve seen during the pandemic, access to fast broadband is a necessity, and once you have access to reliable broadband, it pretty-much takes care of the entertainment factor. We’ll also be improving our mobile coverage and data services with the addition of cell sites that will soon come on stream. Then on the bundling side, we’ll be looking to implement even more attractive propositions, with even better pricing and even bigger benefits.” c

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