Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC) an­nounced yes­ter­day that it has signed a unique part­ner­ship with Deez­er, one of the world's lead­ing mu­sic stream­ing ser­vice providers. With over 35 mil­lion songs to choose from, Deez­er has the largest dig­i­tal mu­sic li­brary in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

"Mu­sic is in­cred­i­bly im­por­tant to our cus­tomers–the coun­tries which we serve are renowned for their mu­si­cal cul­ture and world-fa­mous record­ing artists. As our cus­tomers em­brace a 'dig­i­tal lifestyle', in­creas­ing­ly they al­so want to lis­ten to what­ev­er they want, when­ev­er, and wher­ev­er. The Deez­er mu­sic ser­vice will be avail­able to all LIME, BTC and Ca­ble & Wire­less Pana­ma cus­tomers across CWC's 15 mar­kets, and hope­ful­ly to Flow cus­tomers short­ly," said Phil Bent­ley, CWC CEO.

Mu­sic con­tent is the sec­ond most pop­u­lar fea­ture for mo­bile users in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca. CWC will be of­fer­ing a Deez­er stand alone ser­vice called Deez­er Pre­mi­um+, giv­ing cus­tomers ac­cess to more than 35 mil­lion mu­sic tracks and al­bums, as well as 30 ra­dio chan­nels. New bun­dle mod­els will be avail­able soon.

The deal forms part of CWC's dri­ve to fa­cil­i­tate "Over-The-Top" play­ers on its net­works and en­able un­re­strict­ed cus­tomer ac­cess to the ser­vices and con­tent of their choice. As part of the pro­posed ac­qui­si­tion of Colum­bus, CWC is com­mit­ting that the new com­pa­ny will sup­port an open in­ter­net and will not re­strict any le­gal over-the-top ser­vice or con­tent.

"Through our $1 bil­lion Project Mar­lin in­vest­ment pro­gramme, we are de­liv­er­ing world-class mo­bile da­ta net­works to the Caribbean. And the merg­er with Colum­bus is in­tend­ed to ac­cel­er­ate the de­liv­ery of high-speed in­ter­net ac­cess to more homes across the re­gion. But con­nec­tiv­i­ty is of no val­ue to cus­tomers if they can't ac­cess the ser­vices they want.

"Some oth­er op­er­a­tors con­sid­er they can dic­tate to cus­tomers which OTT ser­vices they can ac­cess. That is not a prin­ci­ple up­on which the new CWC/Colum­bus will be built. We are com­mit­ting that the needs of the cus­tomer will be at the very heart of the new com­pa­ny and if our cus­tomers want to use a giv­en ser­vice, as long as it is le­gal, we will ful­ly en­able it," added Bent­ley.

With this arrange­ment, Deez­er's mu­sic stream­ing ser­vice is now avail­able in more than 35 Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean mar­kets, in what is the fastest grow­ing re­gion for mu­sic sales.

C�dric Diedrich, head of Tele­com Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment at Deez­er said: "We are ex­cit­ed to be able to ex­tend Deez­er's reach through Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and look for­ward to bring­ing our ser­vice to their cus­tomers. Our 35 mil­lion tracks; per­son­alised and hu­man rec­om­men­da­tions; and smart al­go­rithms will en­sure that CWC cus­tomers get to lis­ten to the mu­sic they love over the re­gion's lead­ing mo­bile da­ta and fi­bre net­works."