..

.

…Island is Liberty Latin America’s 5th largest biggest revenue-generating market

Durrant Pate/Contributor

Liberty Latin America, parent company for Flow Jamaica, is increasing its investments in the island.

The parent company has invested US$370 million in expanding and modernising Flow’s Jamaica’s infrastructure over the past five years. Liberty Latin America has committed even more investment in Flow, owned by its subsidiary Cable & Wireless but the amount of the investment was not disclosed.

News of the increased investment comes on the heel of revelations that Flow Jamaica represents Liberty Latin America’s fifth biggest revenue-generating market. In September, Jamaica represented the fifth largest business for the Liberty Latin America group in terms of sales, after Puerto Rico, Chile, Panama and Costa Rica, and the largest within the C&W operations.

Sales in Jamaica growing

Liberty Latin America reported Jamaican sales of US$109 million in the third quarter of this year and US$319 million in the first nine months of the year, up from US$101 million and US$297 million in the year-ago periods.

Between January and November this year Flow connected over 200 localities to its fibre network, bringing high-speed broadband to over 50,000 homes compared to over 500 localities and 200,000 customers connected in the prior 24 months.

LLA CEO Balan Nair said in the quarterly earnings call about the C&W operations, “we continue to build momentum following a slow start to the year. Third quarter performance was once again driven by Jamaica, where we added 4,000 [revenue generating units] in line with the prior quarter.

According to Nair, Jamaica was also the largest contributor within C&W in mobile postpaid with 10,000 adds, “its best ever quarterly performance”.

Recently, Flow also started to offer eSIM services for clients in Jamaica.

The eSIM card is integrated into the phone by the manufacturer and offers customers greater usability and flexibility, as well as safety and sustainability features.

In addition to Jamaica, Cable & Wireless operates in Antigua & Barbuda, Anguilla, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Cayman, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent & the Grenadines and Turks & Caicos Islands.