Flow LTE

[Nathan77791]

Shows they totally out of touch with the masses. They shouldnt even have added anything if thats the cr%p they were coming with.



Funniest thing is that if i visit their facebook page and watch one of their promotional or facebook live videos the alloted 25 megs done. The company needs a management shake up. They have the bandwidth and they not making use of it.

This is about Money my friend, At the end of the day. Flow is a business, not a charity. They have to see a Return on Investments before they increase their offerings. We will always see unacceptable products and services offerings from both Carriers, because of the sluggish and poor Jamaican Market. Until this changes, and the Jamaican Market and consumer improves and makes more disposable incomes. Then we will be stuck at this level. It takes cash to care, and the vast majority of Jamaicans don't have the money to pay per month. For larger data plans, with unlimited service at throttled speeds.

[GPRS Internet]

Build it and they will come...

[Nathan77791]

Build it and they will come...

Not in all cases, In Jamaica's context, Most people just cannot afford data plans and services comparable to the US and UK.

[GPRS Internet]

You know how many people in Jamaica have $70,000+ phones and driving $2m+ cars...

[Nathan77791]

You know how many people in Jamaica have $70,000+ phones and driving $2m+ cars...

Very few my friend, very few. They are what you call the niche market. 92% of Jamaicans cannot afford phones for $100,000+. So the few who can, is not enough to justify investing in Infrastructure that benefits only a tiny amount of people.

[GPRS Internet]

Jamaica is filled with high-end smartphones. I sell far more high-end phones compared to regular phones. Every other phone you see is a high-end phone valued at over $70,000.

Offer good affordable realiable service and people will pay..

These companies just love to milk us..

[Brandysull]

Jamaica is filled with high-end smartphones. I sell far more high-end phones compared to regular phones. Every other phone you see is a high-end phone valued at over $70,000.

Offer good affordable realiable service and people will pay..

These companies just love to milk us..

I agree with you here.... Jamaicans are increasingly acquiring high end phones (which I attribute to an improving economic outlook) and our mobile networks are unable to serve these devices adequately. Just look at how congested HSPA+ is... Tell me if you can get 10 Mbit/s at peak traffic periods. One of the blessings that come with FLOW being under Liberty Global is their emphasis on Mobile service quality & CONSTANT benchmarking. With the improvements coming from such hopefully this rubs of on Digicel and both networks begin aim for ubiquitous 3G coverage and excellent urban LTE coverage.... and HOPEFULLY phase out 2G (not even M2M uses this, all card machines in Jamaica that have a mobile modem use 3G... FLOW 3G network to be specific). Most devices I see daily are at least Cat. 4 LTE enabled (save for the iPhone 5s & 5). It's obvious they wanted to juice all they could from HSPA+.

[Nathan77791]

I agree with you here.... Jamaicans are increasingly acquiring high end phones (which I attribute to an improving economic outlook) and our mobile networks are unable to serve these devices adequately. Just look at how congested HSPA+ is... Tell me if you can get 10 Mbit/s at peak traffic periods. One of the blessings that come with FLOW being under Liberty Global is their emphasis on Mobile service quality & CONSTANT benchmarking. With the improvements coming from such hopefully this rubs of on Digicel and both networks begin aim for ubiquitous 3G coverage and excellent urban LTE coverage.... and HOPEFULLY phase out 2G (not even M2M uses this, all card machines in Jamaica that have a mobile modem use 3G... FLOW 3G network to be specific). Most devices I see daily are at least Cat. 4 LTE enabled (save for the iPhone 5s & 5). It's obvious they wanted to juice all they could from HSPA+.

Having the high end Premium smartphones is one thing, how many people in Jamaica can. Or are willing to pay for premium postpaid plans inclusive of data at larger allotments?. Does Jamaica have enough consumers, who are willing to pay postpaid and for data plans comparable to plans from carriers in the US?. I think the answer to that is NO, if it was otherwise. Both Flow and Digicel would have gone LTE a long time ago, and we would have more larger unlimited throttled data plans, comparable to the US. Take a look at Cayman, Barbados and TCI. Barbados has 1Gbps Fibre home broadband speeds available to the wider public, not just businesses.

The smallest home broadband speed in Barbados is 30-50Mbps, while in Jamaica its 20Mbps. That says a lot, the fact of the matter is that Jamaica is a poor country. The economy is improving, but sluggish. And the vast majority of people in Jamaica simply just cannot afford the first world telecommunication services we so much desire. Business is Business, When Jamaica reaches the state of a fast growing economy, with high and decent paying Jobs. Then we will see changes.

[GPRS Internet]

I will say again.. Build it and they will come...

Digicel and Flow are milking it's users, it boils down to that... Both companies have the capabilities and resources to offer better service and plans...

If you sit and wait for the Jamaican economy to flourish that will never happen anytime soon, but at the same time the technologies that are availble in Jamaica are comparable to most first world countries mainly because there is a need for it.

[Brandysull]

Having the high end Premium smartphones is one thing, how many people in Jamaica can. Or are willing to pay for premium postpaid plans inclusive of data at larger allotments?. Does Jamaica have enough consumers, who are willing to pay postpaid and for data plans comparable to plans from carriers in the US?. I think the answer to that is NO, if it was otherwise. Both Flow and Digicel would have gone LTE a long time ago, and we would have more larger unlimited throttled data plans, comparable to the US. Take a look at Cayman, Barbados and TCI. Barbados has 1Gbps Fibre home broadband speeds available to the wider public, not just businesses.

The smallest home broadband speed in Barbados is 30-50Mbps, while in Jamaica its 20Mbps. That says a lot, the fact of the matter is that Jamaica is a poor country. The economy is improving, but sluggish. And the vast majority of people in Jamaica simply just cannot afford the first world telecommunication services we so much desire. Business is Business, When Jamaica reaches the state of a fast growing economy, with high and decent paying Jobs. Then we will see changes.

I wholeheartedly disagree with that assertion. Jamaica's lean towards Prepaid subscriptions are a legacy of Digicel's meteoric rise to eminence. Before their arrival, cell phone service was only done via postpaid subscriptions. Admittedly, Prepaid allows users flexibility in terms of recharging and the level of service they require, be it simple Voice to purely Data. Despite this, Postpaid (which is constantly on the rise... net-adds on the side of PostPaid are reaching new highs) makes up a sizable portion of both Digicel's and FLOW's (especially FLOW) revenue base. Jamaica, like other countries like the US and Canada, has its high capacity, high speed networks concentrated in the city. Of course, within cities, enhanced average incomes call for higher standards of living and customers calling for speeds of 100 Mbit/s or more (I can't even count the number of people I know that 100 Mbit/s packages from FLOW... and that's 13k a month).

The issue is that Jamaica is not densely populated in one contiguous area. For instance, it's easy to roll out FTTx across Kingston because everyone's so densely compacted in one area making the potential ROI even greater. For you to rollout FTTx feasibly across Jamaica, it would have to be a case of every parish having a sizable population of high bandwidth consumers (excluding B2B and B2G). As a result, cheaper alternatives like VDSL and ADSL2+ are being used to cover these areas and bring them up to the level of service customers in urban areas are accoustomed. If Jamaica were as small as Barbados, Cayman or New Providence Island in the Bahamas (Nassau), we'd undoubtedly have had full fibre and LTE. In fact, the amount of sites FLOW upgraded in their Barbados-wide push for LTE network is around 35 sites. FLOW has 44 LTE sites active in Kingston and still has a good portion of Kingston left to cover. FLOW and Digicel literaly have over 1000 or so sites in Jamaica. Our 'lack' of service quality is due to our geography, population distribution and varying data consumption levels.... not income or economy. In fact, most people in Seychelles for example can't afford an LTE plan but both Cable & Wireless offer LTE islandwide BECAUSE of the small size of coverage needed and their booming tourism industry.