BRIDGETOWN–With more than US$60 mil­lion in­vest­ed in Bar­ba­dos and a promise to build out its ad­vanced broad­band in­fra­struc­ture to serve 100 per cent of homes on the is­land in three years, Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, op­er­a­tors of Flow and Colum­bus Busi­ness So­lu­tions, this week in­tro­duced a se­ries of firsts to Bar­ba­dos, the lat­est and fifth mar­ket for the broad­band com­pa­ny.

"We an­tic­i­pate that our net­work will be con­struct­ed over a three year pe­ri­od, with 30 per cent of Bar­ba­dos house­holds be­ing com­plet­ed by the end of 2013," said John Reid, pres­i­dent and chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer of Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions speak­ing at the launch of Colum­bus Bar­ba­dos at the Lloyd Er­sk­ine San­di­ford Cen­tre on Mon­day evening.

Reid said in ad­di­tion to its full suite of dig­i­tal HD and 3D pro­gram­ming as well as Video On­De­mand and 100mbps in­ter­net to the home, Bar­ba­di­ans will al­so en­joy IP TV to the home and cloud based per­son­al video record­ing ser­vice, a first for the re­gion, as well as Flow To­Go, a prod­uct that will en­able users to watch their Flow video ser­vice and use their Flow land­line phone ser­vice on any portable de­vice any­where that in­ter­net ac­cess is avail­able.

Min­is­ter for En­er­gy, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, Im­mi­gra­tion and In­vest Bar­ba­dos in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Dar­cy Boyce said he was "quite hap­py that Colum­bus ap­pears to be de­liv­er­ing on the promis­es that they made to me when they came to see me maybe a year or so ago".

Boyce was very clear in his ex­pec­ta­tions from the ad­vent of Colum­bus' tech­nol­o­gy in Bar­ba­dos: "That means for our busi­ness­es I ex­pect the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­duce cost to com­pete more ef­fec­tive­ly around the world. But what it al­so means for our house­holds is to have bet­ter qual­i­ty ser­vice at af­ford­able prices. What it means for vis­i­tors is that when they come here they can re­main in touch with their homes, their busi­ness­es and their fam­i­lies wher­ev­er they come from."

Colum­bus, through its brand Colum­bus Busi­ness So­lu­tions, will fa­cil­i­tate the in­creas­ing de­mand for con­nec­tiv­i­ty and ICT ser­vices by pro­vid­ing busi­ness­es with a com­pre­hen­sive prod­uct port­fo­lio in­clud­ing Ded­i­cat­ed In­ter­net Ac­cess, Metro Eth­er­net, In­ter­na­tion­al Pri­vate Line Con­nec­tiv­i­ty, MPLS, Da­ta Cen­tre ser­vices, Busi­ness Voice and a specif­i­cal­ly de­signed Broad­band, Video and Voice of­fer­ing for Small & Medi­um En­ter­prise (SME) cus­tomers.

Colum­bus' suite of cloud-based pro­duces will en­able busi­ness­es to dri­ve down their op­er­a­tional costs, im­prove ef­fi­cien­cies, and en­sure busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity and se­cu­ri­ty.

The Colum­bus Bar­ba­dos launch cul­mi­nat­ed with Flow World, a unique, in­for­ma­tive and en­ter­tain­ing two-day event show­ing the ser­vices of the Colum­bus brands. Pa­trons at­tend­ing Flow World had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­act with fea­tures of both brands to ex­pe­ri­ence broad­band In­ter­net, dig­i­tal ca­ble TV and dig­i­tal land­line phone ser­vices that Colum­bus will pro­vide in Bar­ba­dos.