Free flowing communications

Sustainable Business Magazine speaks to Stephen Price, Country Manager at Flow Jamaica, about the launch of their new customer-centric bundles, the Flow Foundation, and the company’s contribution to Jamaica’s COVID-19 response.

Part of the Liberty Latin America group of companies, and formerly known as Cable & Wireless, Flow is one of the leading telecommunications and entertainment providers in the Caribbean and Latin America. The company has maintained a presence in the region since the 1870s, when it ran the first sub-sea cable connecting Europe with Jamaica’s Holland Bay.

Today, Flow boasts over 50,000 kilometers of modern subsea and terrestrial fiber networks, connecting most parts of Latin America. “It’s an award-winning network, and it’s been a phenomenal journey to get to this point,” explains Stephen Price, Country Manager for Flow Jamaica. “We’ve evolved over the years to the first quad play network across the Caribbean, providing mobile services, cable TV subscriptions, broadband, and fixed-voice, right across the entire country.”

RAPID DEVELOPMENT Despite Flow’s extensive history, the company is well-aware that it operates within an industry undergoing rapid change. “When

you look back at twenty years ago, we were just talking about 2G,” says Mr. Price. “Now, the conversation has become: ‘When is the 5G evolution coming to the Caribbean?’ The answer is that it may come very soon. In the past three-to-four years, we’ve been building fiber-to-the-home in communities across Jamaica, and we continue to advance every single year, taking daily steps to make sure that we make the latest technologies available to our customers.”

As a developing nation, Jamaica offers both advantages and disadvantages for businesses. “You have to understand the strength-of-wallet of the consumer,” explains Mr. Price. “This is a region with currency challenges, with depreciations occurring on an annual basis and low GDP per-capita. On the other hand, it’s no secret that greater access to technology, data, and the internet has helped this country to stabilize the ship and to continue to grow. Access to the internet is key if you want to grow multiple points of GDP, and we now cover almost 96% of the population with LTE service, so that even

if they don’t have fixed connectivity, they’ll have mobile broadband. To achieve this, investment has been vital, but it doesn’t come cheap if we want to reach the length and breadth of the country. Increasingly, we’re working with the government to develop areas of public-private partnership, helping to connect all of our communities, and ensuring that Jamaica’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals are achieved.”

COMPREHENSIVE PACKAGE In November of this year, Flow held an event to launch its new fixed-mobile convergence service. “In the past, we’ve

looked at mobile services as its own line of business, and the same has gone for subscription television or fixed-voice services,” says Mr. Price. “More and more, we recognize that the consumer doesn’t perceive these distinctions. Instead, they see – and they demand – connectivity experiences. Our consumers want to know that they have a value-leading provider giving them access to all services in the form of a single bundle. This is particularly the case since the advent of COVID because of the economic challenges to their strength-ofwallet. It’s for that reason that we’ve started on the journey of fixed-mobile convergence, giving our consumers a product that delivers the savings they needed, the speeds they want, and ensures that they see rewards for their loyalty. We’re seeing more and more demand each day for these services, as the world continues to push down its road of becoming more digital, and the need for traditional brick-andmortar slows.”

Looking ahead, Flow Jamaica plans to continue innovating with regards to its service offerings. “We need to maintain that pride of placement, being the single provider for the entire household package of technology,” says Mr. Smith. “That means, we need to give our consumers total control, flexibility, and affordability, and evolve our business to keep them satisfied. The future of technology is limitless. Streaming services are booming, and offer a clear example of something that we have to embrace, by having those services traffic on our network, and ensuring that they’re part of our consumer bundles.”

STRONG FOUNDATIONS Flow has an extensive history of supporting community development, and the company formalized its official philanthropic arm in 2004, with the launch of the Flow Foundation. “Since its launch, the Foundation

has developed a rich legacy of connecting communities and transforming lives”, says Mr. Price. “We’ve invested millions of dollars, executing hundreds of projects across three main areas: bridging the digital divide; sport, youth and educating the community; and environmental responsibility.”

Moving on from past successes, this year saw Flow embark on a new focus, launching a National Development Program to drive digital inclusion across Jamaica. “We’re focusing on digital education, supporting micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, and helping budding Jamaican entrepreneurs

to transition into the digital space,” says Mr. Price. “As a country, we know that in order to make this transition, we have to empower Jamaicans to participate in this digital economy. To do that, we need to continue to drive penetration and guarantee that technology is available at affordable prices for that participation to happen. While other countries in North America have access to computers and laptops at affordable prices, in Jamaica this is not necessarily the case. Our challenge is to find the right means and methods to ensure that Jamaicans, and especially those in rural and under-served

areas, are not left behind, giving them access to the ample opportunities in the online space.”

IMPACT AND RECOVERY Like the rest of Jamaica, Flow has felt the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Since we went into lockdown last March, we saw an increase of over 47% in bandwidth consumption,” says Mr. Price. “As an essential service, we had to respond to that by continuing to build out both our fixed and mobile LTE network, ensuring that we connected more homes. Despite around 70% of our own employees working from home, we’ve succeeded in continuously serving the population. We’ve created mobile hubs and virtual stores via WhatsApp, in order to reach our consumers without them having to go into the store. People appreciate their community stores and can now continue to interact with us via those means. We also created more online portals to allow customers to pay their bills virtually, and we’ve enabled our own e-commerce space on our website, so that consumers can buy our products online. Overall, it’s an indicator of our success

in connecting Jamaicans over this period, demonstrated by the fact that Jamaica has moved up the broadband rankings globally, with many persons receiving the kind of speeds experienced in some areas in the USA or Canada.”

Most significantly of all, Flow has played an integral supporting role to the Government of Jamaica in its COVID-19 response. “We’ve worked with the Ministry of Health & Wellness, continuously pushing their message out to people,” says Mr. Price. “We’ve provided free advertising space on our subscription TV platform, so that their key messages – ‘wear a mask’, ‘social distancing’ and others – are proliferated right across the country. In terms of opening up Jamaica’s borders, we’ve provided a backbone for all the major airports, by allowing customers to download the national app that’s being used to track new arrivals and helping to ensure that they respect their 14-day quarantines. We’ve also worked in partnership with an education firm, developing our own study platform to provide classes and study mechanisms for over 50,000 students of exam age, helping them to complete their studies and prepare for their exams. Education has been severely disrupted during the pandemic, but we’re proud to have been able to make these vital contributions, among others.” c