This year's proposed capital spending by the company will match last year's expenditure, bringing to about half what it plans to spend over the next dozen years or so to develop the infrastructure through which it hopes to grab a substantial share of Jamaica's communications and entertainment market.

"Construction will continue over the next 10 to 15 years," said Rick Pardy, who heads Columbus' operations in Jamaica.

To complete kingston

According to Pardy, the planned expenditure during the life of the development is US$400 million.

Flow is offering corporate and domestic clients a range of communications services, as well as broadband Internet and cable television, via a fibre optic network.  Last year, it spent US$43 million to lay an undersea fibre optic cable between Jamaica and the United States and nearly another US$80 million on its network.

Now, it is pushing to complete its Kingston infrastructure before the start of the third quarter, a move that analysts see as important given the plan by mobile telephone provider, Digicel, the market leader, to roll out its islandwide wireless broadband by mid-2007.

"We will cover all of Kingston, Portmore and all commercial districts running on the north coast between Ocho Rios and Negril by the end of the year," said Pardy.

"By August this year, every household in Kingston should have access to our network," he added .  "And by the end of the year, all households in Portmore and any hotel on the north coast will also have access."

Having decided that the most robust network in delivering broadband service is a hardwire fixed-line one, Columbus is building "street by street", a slow and tedious process.

It is against this backdrop that Columbus expects its national build-out to continue for up to a decade-and-half.

Currently, only 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps), or less than one per cent of the firm's 320 Gbps bandwidth capability is "lit up", or activated, and only 25 per cent of that is being used by existing customers.  Based on Pardy's estimate that the total market usage is about 5 Gbps, mostly by Internet users, Jamaica's Internet capabilities are at present far under-utilised.

He is optimistic, however, about future usage of Internet in the island.

"Less than five per cent of households subscribe to broadband," said Pardy.  "By 2009, we think it will be a lot closer to 20-25 per cent."

Another major positive Pardy sees for his firm is lower international calling rates which have already been halved since Flow started offering service in May last year.

"The fact that we have this available means that smaller carriers can now be more competitive in their prices, and rates are significantly down," said Pardy.  "Right now, you can make telephone calls to the U.S. for less than five US cents per minute."

The rate a year ago, was around 13 US cents a minute.

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