FLOW announces end to copper wire as fiber optics is fully in operation

Barbados has become the first island in the Caribbean to be fully wired by fiber optics, said FLOW, the regional subsidiary of telecommunications giant Cable & Wireless as it completed its fibre to the home (FTTH) network rollout.

The replacement of traditional copper wire with fibre connection effectively allows for cheaper transmission of virtually limitless bandwidth of voice, data and video at the speed of light.

But the innovation will not result in lower prices for customers, executives told reporters in an online briefing on Thursday.

They instead touted fibre’s potential to make the island more attractive for investments, faster connectivity, greater reliability and shorter downtimes in the event of a fault.

Desron Bynoe, recently appointed as Country Manager for Barbados, said: “It gives me great pleasure to announce that effective September 1, 2021 FLOW is now delivering services to all Barbadian customers exclusively by its state-of-the-art fibre network.”

The telecom recently decommissioned the final components of its century-old copper-based network, marking an end to an approximately 15-year project to deliver island-wide fibre to the home connections for broadband, landline and television services, he said.

A fibre optic ring around the greater Bridgetown area has been operating since the early 1990s.

Describing the FTTH rollout as the most complex project the company has ever undertaken, Bynoe said it demonstrated the company’s long-term commitment to Barbados’ development.

“The way that we anticipate that we would move forward is to really drive value, so not necessarily reducing prices but offering greater flexibility in terms of what we can do,” he said, as he pointed to several new plans that the company was now offering.

FLOW executives would not say how much the project cost. While the initial roll-out of fibre network began in 2007, it was in mid- 2016 that the company announced that up to that time an investment of about $300 million (US$160 million) was made in building out its infrastructure, which included the FTTH network.

A year later, the company had indicated that its investment would include about another $150 million (US$75 million).

Bynoe said the venture enabled the company to now provide customers with “the best service, experience and value possible”.

He added: “This is a remarkable opportunity as it relates to the attracting of investments because the network is there to support it. I do know that Barbados has the labour capital as well to support whatever investment. So this offers a huge opportunity where Barbados can now distinguish itself from the rest of the region and seek to attract much needed investment in the island space because of this network.”

Further outlining benefits of the FTTH, FLOW’s Manager for Construction O’Neil Greene said the network was now more reliable, when compared to copper.

“When compared to copper the bandwidth of fibre includes increased speed, reliability, additional capacity in terms of bandwidth and security. Broken or damaged fibre can also be detected and repaired quicker than copper, and fibre is less susceptible to environmental factors such as temperature and electromagnetic fluctuations,” he said.

But the downside to the FTTH network was that landline services will go down during a power outage, he said.

The executives indicated that this could be easily corrected if customers buy their own uninterrupted power supply (UPS) system to back-up power.

Greene also revealed that FLOW is looking at the possibility of putting more of its infrastructure underground.

Marilyn Sealy, Senior Manager of Communications for the Southern Caribbean, said the multimillion-dollar investment spoke to the level of confidence the company had in the island, pointing out that FLOW has been working closely with Government over the last few years “to ensure that we shore up our network as it relates to the Welcome Stamp”.

Sealy disclosed that the telecom has boosted network speeds and was already seeing positive results, with more people indicating an interest to relocate to Barbados as they found favor with the connectivity.

“We continue to work with the Government of Barbados on this and we are working on another project as we speak, which will certainly redound to the benefit of Barbadians,” said Sealy, who was also mum on the details of that next project.

“This is going to redound to the benefit of our country as a whole and specifically our tourism product. We have been trying to ensure that our hotels and persons within the industry remain connected and what they are offering in the hotels in terms of our TV product is at a top level,” she said.

The company is preparing to ship its copper infrastructure which amounts to thousands of feet of cable to the US for recycling.
(marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb)