Two sister companies, Cable Bahamas and Flow, both owned by Columbus Communications which includes as one of its major investors Jamaican-born billionaire Michael Lee Chin, came in for criticism of their ability to honour their commitments.
In Nassau, the newly minted Minster of Consumer Affairs V. Alfred Grey accused the company of not living up to its contractual obligations by providing cable service to various islands of The Bahamas, particularly singling out his MICAL constituency.
Meanwhile Richard Pardy who did the pioneering work in The Bahamas as head of Cable Bahamas is performing the same role in the group’s foray into Jamaica.
According to an interview he had with Jamaica’s Observer Business Wednes-day, Mr Pardy dismissed the suggestion made by Rodney Davis president of competitor Cable and Wireless, namely that Flow would only focus on “Kingston, St. Andrews and St. Catherine and ignore the rest of Jamaica”.
The allegation is similar to what happened in The Bahamas. Cable Bahamas serviced the more highly populated islands of New Providence, Grand Bahama, Eleuthera and Abaco. Mr Pardy dismissed his Cable and Wireless counterpart’s allegation stating that Flow’s objective is “to service Jamaica. Most homes in Jamaica have cable and fixed line service. What we will do is give people greater choices in those areas. For example, we will offer the on screen navigation and pay per view services that Jamaican cable subscribers currently lack.”
Flow’s strategy is to purchase four existing cable companies, an intention it announced several weeks ago. According to the Observer in a related story, Flow’s acquisition offers to “various cable and internet service providers” have yet to be successful. “None has agreed to the terms being offered by the telecom.”
To be fair to Cable Bahamas, however, about providing cable service in the southern Bahamas, it was thwarted when its sister subsidiary FibraLink which had won the contract to connect Jamaica to the rest of the world via submarine fibreoptic cables did not receive regulatory approval to route the cable via the southern Bahamas. Cable Bahamas would have been able to then connect the southern Bahamas to broadband.
Instead BTC which had decided to run its own fibreoptic cables in the southern Bahamas is working with the Americas Region Caribbean Optical-ring System (ARCOS) to run the cables as Minister informed Bahamians in a recent interview.
ARCOS is owned by Columbus Communications the same company that owns Cable Bahamas and Flow and several other broadband and media companies.
Michael Lee Chin who independently owns media properties in Jamaica took a significant position in Columbus Communications which is owned by Ironbound and includes Brendan Paddick, chairman of Cable Bahamas, Daniel Meyers and John Risley chairman and founder of Clearwater Seafoods which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
According to the Observer, Columbus Communications is a “partnership between Lee Chin and Canadian businessman John Risely who is chairman of Clearwater Seafoods Limited, a Nova Scotia-based publicly traded seafood harvesting, processing and distribution business.”
Back in 1994 when Philip Keeping won the franchise, his agreement included a clause that stated that he would always have “majority controlling interest”. It was an interest which he held in the wholly owned Columbus Communications Ltd of Columbus Communications Inc. That was in July. By October of the same year the clause was struck out on the quixotic notion that “it was determined that Cable Bahamas ought to be Bahamian-owned”.
By: C. E. Huggins, Business Editor, The Nassau Guardian
