Flow boss aims to settle regulator issues
Michele English, Flow President
(CNS Business): Following recent reports of disputes between Flow and both the Information and Communications Technology Authority (ICTA) and Department of Immigration, the firm’s president, Michele English, was in the Cayman Islands this week meeting with government officials to resolve the issues relating to human resources, technical concerns and the acquisition of the parent company, Cable & Wireless, by Liberty Global. Playing down the recent difficulties the firm appears to have encountered, the Florida-based chief said she was confident there wasn’t anything that would stand in the way of the new licence.
Speaking to the media Tuesday, English said the company was dealing with the matters raised by the regulator and government. She said she did not believe there were any issues that couldn’t be worked through and talks with the officials here had all gone well, with all the parties wanting the same thing.
English noted that during the process of an acquisition, it wasn’t unusual to have matters arise with regulators. However, she said there was nothing in this acquisition that should give the ICTA cause for concern and that everyone was committed to resolving any outstanding matters.
“I left all the meetings with positive feelings,” she said, adding that everyone agreed that Liberty was a good company.
English said that the more than $5 billion acquisition was a good thing for customers, and going forward Flow would be making even greater investments in its local network to tackle the complaints about broadband speeds.
She said that having invested more than $30 million over the last two years in its mobile network, creating the fastest and most reliable service anywhere, the company was switching its attention to investment in its fixed network, which would be funded by the savings resulting from the increased purchasing power the Liberty takeover had given the company.
However, despite future investment and the expected improvements, she said, consistent set internet speed was not something any service provider could guarantee because of numerous variables, including the web pages a user is viewing to the amount of devices using the same modem. Nevertheless, the forthcoming investment would see improvements in the service all across the island.
English described Cayman as a very important market to the company, even though it’s small. Because of the kind of clients there are in Cayman, the significant use of information communication technology was far greater than its size. She noted that reliability in a jurisdiction like Cayman, where the financial services is so dependent on ICT, was critical.
Category: ICT, Local Business, Technology, Utilities
