Aug 2008 Financial News

C&W to invest US$400m in pan-Caribbean structure

Aug 13, 2008

Cable and Wireless, which is forging its 13 Caribbean units into a single company, yesterday announced a US$400 million (J$29 billion) investment over the next three years to upgrade infrastructure and enhance its ability to compete in regional markets.

"We have heard from our customers, employees and other key stakeholders that we need to do several things differently and we have taken note," said Richard Dodd, CEO of Cable and Wireless Caribbean.

"So, as we progress with our transformation programme our customers can expect to see greater tangible benefits from doing business with us," Dodd said.

C&W Caribbean is meant to duplicate the structure of other foreign-owned regional financial houses, example, with a supra-national structure that governs the group, under to which the national subsidiaries will retain their individual identities, but an-swerable to C&W Caribbean.

For more than a century, UK-based Cable and Wireless largely enjoyed a telecommunications monopoly in English-speaking Caribbean, until Caribbean governments, at the beginning of the decade, began to liberalise their telecoms market, starting with mobile phone services.

MARKET SHARE LOST

Cable and Wireless lost market share to up-starts like the Irish-owned Digicel, which has emerged not only as market leader, but has branched out into Latin America and the Pacific.

In the bid the win back market share, if not reassert is former dominance, Cable and Wireless has been through a plethora of management changes and restructuring, the latest of which was unveiled three months ago, involving a curious management structure.

While Barbados-based Dodd is CEO of Cable and Wireless Caribbean, its chairman is Phil Green, the president and CEO of Cable and Wireless Jamaica, one of the component parts of the new business.

A seamless network

However, C&W's bosses prefer to focus on what they plan to deliver in the new operation rather than the seemingly odd reporting arrangements: a seamless network, based on third generation (3G) technology and a raft of new services.

While the new regional approach will allow Cable and Wireless to offer services seamlessly across regional market - particularly beneficial to firms with operations across the Caribbean and to people who travel - domestic managers will maintain the flexibility to shape products to home markets.

"Cable & Wireless has been a fixture in the Caribbean for more than 100 years and the company intends to be around long into the future to bring our customers the superior brand of telecommunications products and services that has helped to put the Caribbean ahead of many regions in terms of telecommunications infrastructure," he said.

Yesterday's announcement did not provide a break out on how the proposed capital expenditure will be allocated to specific markets or what specific products the cash will be spent.



Source:
The Jamaica Gleaner
Wednesday August 13, 2008
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080813/business/business4.html