Flow, the Jamaican subsidiary of a Barbados-based firm called Columbus Communications Group has, over the past weeks, been deploying broadband fibre-optic network across Jamaica with the aim of capturing a slice of the lucrative e-based sector.

Richard Pardy

On Thursday, this company that is already offering high-speed Internet services to businesses such as GraceKennedy Remittance Services and Medecus Insurance, was formally launched in Jamaica.

Next month Flow will begin offering three different services to residential customers - a digital landline service, digital cable service with over 250 channels and ultra high-speed Internet access.

Richard Pardy, chief executive officer of Flow, in a presentation to the Rotary Club of Kingston said his company was taking advantage of a sector that he believed was under serviced by the incumbents.
Pardy also believes that Jamaica was lagging behind the rest of the region in the area of broadband.

"The network we are building is on par with the world.about three per cent (of Jamaicans) have broadband access compared to forty per cent in the rest of the region," said Pardy. "This won't cut it.the objective is to get 200,000 to 700,000 in two years."

Pardy later told Sunday Finance that he expected his company to grab "35 to 40 per cent" of the Jamaican market in broadband services by the end of the year. By offering Internet access prices as low as $650 per month, Pardy believes that he will be able to "put Jamaica on the right side of the digital divide".

Since entering the Jamaican market in 2005, Flow has grown from five employees to 90 workers and contractors. Pardy expects employment to "double within 120 days" and by the end of the year, reach 300.

This CEO, who successfully led a team of professionals through a successful broadband deployments in the Bahamas, told this newspaper that though there was no immediate plan, he does not rule out his company going public in a couple of years.

"In terms of the way we financially manage our company, we will continually need capital," he said. "Right now we are using private money and judicial banks and as our company grows we will look at all types of ongoing financing, so the standards that we have set for ourselves is that we will have the financial records and financial integrity to go public for equity, debts or whatever."

Added Pardy: 'We just want to keep every option open because the thing we do know is that capital markets change overtime, the only thing that won't change overtime is that we will continue to require capital."

The total capital cost of the project was US$45 million and was financed by Flow's parent company, Columbus Communications Inc. Columbus Communications, of which Canadian billionaire Michael Lee Chin is a major partner, is a Barbados-based company with over US$500 million in operating assets in 18 countries throughout the Caribbean and Central America.

Prior to being appointed CEO of Columbus' operations in Jamaica in 2004, Pardy was the CEO of Cable Bahamas, where he was instrumental in constructing a broadband network linking the principal islands of the Bahamas with Florida. Today, this network serves 97 per cent of the population across 16 islands in that country.

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