Susan Gordon, Business Reporter

Michelle English, chief executive officer of Flow. - File

BOCA RATON, Florida:

Columbus Communication Inc, parent company of Flow, on Thursday unveiled its new direct network which links Jamaica to Florida and Colombia via the group's newly constructed Boca Raton Cable Station in Florida.

The Florida station was finalised two months after the Morant Point station, which was commissioned in Jamaica, May 14.

The new Colombia-Florida Express Route (CFX-1) includes 70 kilometres of undersea fibre- optic cable, stretching from Morant Point in St Thomas and connecting with Columbus' 2,400 kilometre network that extends from Boca Raton Florida to Cartagena in Colombia.

Reduce rates

Flow says the connectivity should reduce Internet and telecommunication rates, parti-cularly for commercial customers, including banks, hotels and telecoms, and boost capacity in broadband and telecom circuits.

"We've done our part in making Jamaica the centre of the telecommunication hub in the region," said CEO of Flow, Michelle English.

"We'll be selling circuits cheaper and people doing immediate interactive games or services will see a tremendous boost from our north-bound route," she told Sunday Business at the launch in Florida.

Flow, one of the group's retail companies offering triple play of digital cable television, digital landline and Internet services, invested US$80 million in the project, which it wrapped up in July, after eight months.

The job of laying the cable was contracted to Tyco Marine.

"On the commercial side of it, we have a good piece of the market," said English referring to Internet services.

At present, Flow claims a 60 per cent share of the hotel market for Internet, but English did not say how much new business the company anticipated from the fibre-link investment.

The company is attempting to sell the CFX-1 as the backbone of a more reliable service, saying it would offer a more resilient link, capable of withstanding hurricanes which tend to disrupt data flow.

"The reliability of the service means that business owners have no need to worry about downtime or inefficiencies," said English.

Last December, former Flow CEO, Richard Pardy, made much the same point, saying then that while the North-South link would increase bandwith by a factor of 60 over the current 2.5 gigabits per second, it was meant to be a back-up system.

"It's not a capacity issue; it's a restructuring system or a back-up system," he said.

"We are living in a zone prone to disasters, earthquakes and hurricanes. We spend so that we can survive a hurricane and it's critical that we maintain contact with the international world."

More capacity

Sunday Business understands the CFX-1 network has the capacity to deliver 40 megabytes per home or per customer, although Flow currently offers 15 megabytes.

Flow's third and oldest network runs from Bull Bay, St Thomas, to the Dominican Republic.

The triple-play company, which self-insures the cable, is planning next to run festoons with fibre from Morant Point across to Reading in Montego Bay, St James.

The company, since its birth in the local communication market in 2005, has invested over US$180 million into building out fibre-optic infrastructure.

Columbus Communication, with an asset base of US$1.2 billion, sells capacity and circuits from outside Colombia.

It says 35-40 per cent of its traffic originates from Colombia in South America.

susan.gordon@gleanerjm.com