Published November 7, 2014 by Jamaica Gleaner
Digicel's Group slow creep into the cable market has been trumped by chief rival Cable & Wireless Commu-nications (CWC) with a massive deal announced on Tuesday that is expected to eventually merge the operations of phone company LIME with triple-play operator Flow.
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| Phil Bentley, CEO of Cable & Wireless Commmunications Inc. File photos |
CWC is buying Columbus International Inc, which owns Flow networks in seven markets and Karib Cable in one, for about US$3 billion, inclusive of debt.
The parties have a conditional agreement on the cash and shares transaction for 100 per cent of Columbus' equity, but Digicel is already signalling that it will be seeking the intervention of regulators, saying the deal raises issues about competition.
Under the agreement between the parties, CWC will pay cash of US$707.5 million and issue 1,557,529,605 new ordinary shares in CWC to three Columbus shareholders, giving them 36 per cent ownership in Cable & Wireless.
The cash and share issue are valued at US$1.85 billion. Columbus' debt of about US$1.2 billion will also be assumed by CWC.
It also plans to invest US$145 million of capital in the operation to be spent over three years, dating from the closing of the acquisition.
Columbus offers broadband, fixed-line telephony and cable or subscriber television services to a customer base of about 700,000 - operating as Flow in Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, Grenada, St Vincent & the Grenadines, St Lucia and Curaçao and as Karib in Antigua.
Its business-to-business dealings are executed through subsidiary Columbus Business Solutions, and it offers fibre connectivity to some 42 markets through Columbus Networks. more
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