Flow Has Upgraded Internet Speeds

[5dB]

I agree with you on the technology bit; some are getting symmetric speeds on fibre -- here in Jamaica, in fact (if you're one of the lucky few who have fibre from FLOW & have symmetric 150/150 on their top-end bundles). I will say that this recent upgrade brings us to the level of residential uplink capacity of the likes of Virgin Media UK, which tops out at 50 Mbit/s on their Gig1 service. I do also expect a good speed bump on the download coming very soon too. FLOW will soon roll out LLA's Total TV product, which is IPTV based & streams over WiFi (or Ethernet if you have it). I see burst speeds hitting up to 700 Mbit/s on the download quite regularly; not a sight I was seeing earlier this year.

Any new word on the roll out of Flow FTTH?

[khat17]

Any new word on the roll out of Flow FTTH?

Apparently they're not keen on rolling out GPON/FTTH where HFC already exists. So there may be a bit of a wait for most customers. If they'd only open up the bandwidth on the HFC...

[Brandysull]

Apparently they're not keen on rolling out GPON/FTTH where HFC already exists. So there may be a bit of a wait for most customers. If they'd only open up the bandwidth on the HFC...

Quite so. I had a speak with customer care and, unsurprisingly, was informed that HFC is regarded as a part of their "fibre" product, much like their peers at Virgin Media in the UK. Notwithstanding, it does look like Gigabit offerings are becoming commonplace, with Barbados, BVI, and (soon) Cayman coming onstream. Jamaica, being the largest market, is still capped at 150 Mbit/s but, should also be due for this treatment given FLOW Business' ability to provision customers with 250 Mbit/s down & 20 Mbit/s up on HFC along with the promise of Gigabit service (if T&Cs are to be believed).

Let's see how this all plays out.

[Brandysull]

Some more market echoes happening across the FLOW Caribbean footprint with the UTS to FLOW rebrand across the Dutch & French Caribbean with FLOW's broadband product shakeup in Curaçao.



Curaçao has become the latest market to now offer speeds up to 500 Mbit/s (over HFC). I've also heard rumbles of "faster" speeds coming to Jamaica with the "fiber-fast" push being parroted over TV, Radio, and Web. The exact TTM however is wholly unclear.

[psilos]

The main difference with BVI, Barbados, Cayman, Aruba etc and Jamaica is km squared or squared miles and population density. Literally all of them can fit inside Kingston.

They are also flat so its easy to run fibre literally all throughout the country. Even if you consider HFC the number of homes passed so low in comparison to Jamaica so they can afford from a bandwidth perspective to increase their QAM and get higher upload and download. They can also more readily afford to swap out equipment that can support DOCSIS 3.1 and up.

Literally all of FLOW's costs in the other islands is cheaper and their currencies are also stronger and more stable so they can get the latest greatest more quickly. Our proximity to the US and the number of subsea fibre cables means that Jamaica has more access to bandwidth. FLOW just needs to figure out the best way to get them to users for the last mile.

In case they are monitoring, 10Mb/s upload was not sufficient in 2020, isn't in 2021 and definitely not 2022.

[BNOVA]

Literally all of FLOW's costs in the other islands is cheaper and their currencies are also stronger and more stable so they can get the latest greatest more quickly. Our proximity to the US and the number of subsea fibre cables means that Jamaica has more access to bandwidth. FLOW just needs to figure out the best way to get them to users for the last mile.

In case they are monitoring, 10Mb/s upload was not sufficient in 2020, isn't in 2021 and definitely not 2022.

The Highlighted are the main reasons we have not seen as quick advances hopefully the will soon figure out the best way to proceed.

[khat17]

The Highlighted are the main reasons we have not seen as quick advances hopefully the will soon figure out the best way to proceed.

Agree/Disagree.

From a technical standpoint this may be true, but from the general MO of FLOW/CW - this is not the case.

CW/FLOW has always had the ability to give more. Even in recent speed upgrades while they were "testing" things out, I got up to 25Mbps upload with bursts going up to 30+Mbps. Can the do it? Yes. Can it be sustained? Yes. Do they have the capacity? Yes. But - why do that and give it to people when they can reap what the can from the existing speeds/packages/infrastructure?

For the younger ones in here - back when we had dial-up and moved to DSL, none of the reps actually advised you about the speed difference or cost savings. Many customers, including businesses, were still on a pay as you go dial-up service when DSL offered unlimited connectivity. And by pay as you go - I'm talking about time spent or MB used during the session. CWJ was quite comfortable to allow customers to stay on the older packages.

During the switch between DSL and HFC it was a similar case. The focus seemed to have been on the buyout of FLOW to reduce their infrastructure costs. This was also hindered by the fact that some of the purchased infrastructure (smaller companies) was not up to standard. This resulted in areas such as Negril - imagine that - not having triple play service for 10+ years now. I think it's only recently that HFC Internet is now available. Meaning late last year and this year.

CWJ has never been in the habit of saving people money. If they have an older package available that costs more - they will leave you on it until it gets grandfathered into some other package.

Anyways. Let's hope and see what happens. The infrastructure is there. The holdup is the company and "executive decisions".

[BNOVA]

Agree/Disagree.

From a technical standpoint this may be true, but from the general MO of FLOW/CW - this is not the case.


Anyways. Let's hope and see what happens. The infrastructure is there. The holdup is the company and "executive decisions".

I have heard on the HFC side there are technical issues preventing higher uploads that having newer equipment won't necessarily fix. However as those issues are fixed little by little higher uploads are rolled out.

Fiber to the Home don't have those issues as far as I am aware but it is not everywhere.

However I don't disagree with Business practices you have observed.

[mista736]

Agree/Disagree.

CWJ has never been in the habit of saving people money. If they have an older package available that costs more - they will leave you on it until it gets grandfathered into some other package.

The irony in the fact the tech advancements can actually save them money as well. Increased capacity and lower CPS can lead to increase in ARPU. Yes there is Capex, but that moves into Opex and improves for even their workflows.

[Brandysull]

The main difference with BVI, Barbados, Cayman, Aruba etc and Jamaica is km squared or squared miles and population density. Literally all of them can fit inside Kingston.

They are also flat so its easy to run fibre literally all throughout the country. Even if you consider HFC the number of homes passed so low in comparison to Jamaica so they can afford from a bandwidth perspective to increase their QAM and get higher upload and download. They can also more readily afford to swap out equipment that can support DOCSIS 3.1 and up.

Literally all of FLOW's costs in the other islands is cheaper and their currencies are also stronger and more stable so they can get the latest greatest more quickly. Our proximity to the US and the number of subsea fibre cables means that Jamaica has more access to bandwidth. FLOW just needs to figure out the best way to get them to users for the last mile.

In case they are monitoring, 10Mb/s upload was not sufficient in 2020, isn't in 2021 and definitely not 2022.

They've been doing a number of relevant works in the background throughout the past 12+ months in Jamaica which, if compared with work done in other LLA markets such as Panama & Chile, is tracking in a similar manner. As the flagship market for LLA's FLOW brand, I'm quite sure that the market will be treated with faster speeds in due time. Having seen speeds over their HFC network, during the Christmas period last, burst up to 800 Mbit/s DL & ~50 Mbit/s UL before being constrained by their (newly-upgraded) CMTS (in Montego Bay), those 24 DOCSIS channels are ready for the challenge. Coupled, with the recent approval for local use by Jamaica's SMA, FLOW's current Arris boxes' successor -- a DOCSIS 3.1 802.11ac Wave 3 box -- has likely already undergone the necessary homologation work.

I see lots on the horizon. I just hope it all comes soon enough.