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by pltm
(PLTM) - As a result of damages incurred from Hurricane Irma, local mobile and cable service provider, Flow, has spent close to $25 million this year in their rebuilding efforts.
Head of the Commercial Division, Mr. Ravindra Maywahlall shared that 2018 has been a challenging year for the business.
“Our infrastructure started from scratch. Customer numbers are not where they used to be. We have spent close to $25 million this year alone rebuilding our infrastructure.”
The money spent on rebuilding, he added, poses a problem for their profit figures.
“As you can tell, we are not in a large populace so from a revenue point of view and profitability…that's a challenge.”
Speaking to their recovery process, Mr. Maywahlall shared, “There were some delays, however, we are happy to say that by December we would have built back roughly 50 percent of the infrastructure.”
This, he said, includes the “entire southern coast of Tortola,” adding that they are ready to connect customers in those areas.
He further added, “On the northern coast we have pockets of connections, so Cane Garden Bay and Zion’s Hill, Carrot Bay area…those areas are connected now. We are currently building on Virgin Gorda so anywhere between Nail Bay and the Valley should be able to connect to service within the next couple of weeks on Virgin Gorda.”
With the rebuilding also comes the improvement of customer service, the Flow official stated. This comes in the form of fibre optic cables.
“In majority of the areas, we have rebuilt fibre to the homes. So what that means is that we are bringing a fibre cable straight into the back of your router that will be providing that connection. Simply means better performance on the network for you as a customer, no more buffering,” Mr. Maywahlall divulged.
Meanwhile, as Christmas approaches, the service provider has launched its Christmas campaign, which will see customers receiving a number of deals on their service plans.
“We have revamped all of our combo plans, prepaid combo and data plans,” Mr. Maywahlall shared, explaining that, “Combo plans give our customers a combination of voice, SMS and data.”
As part of their Christmas promotion, he related, “Customers can get 4 gigabytes of data and 500 minutes for just $28. Those minutes they can use to call locally or internationally. So it's definitely something our customers have been asking for…more data on these plans, we have done that and it's something we are very excited about.”
There have also been some improvements to the data plans.
According to the Head of the Commercial Division, “We have also revamped our data plan. Customers can have 4 gigabytes of data for just $50 and during the Christmas period, all of our combo plan subscribers will get double data on any plan that they take. We have introduced free Whatsapp on all of our combo plans.”
Existing Postpaid customers will also benefit from free minutes during the weekend while new customers will receive free minutes as well as double data on their plans.
