Suzanne Shep­pard

New­Co, the com­pa­ny to be cre­at­ed from the merg­er of Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC) and Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al, is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er broad­er prod­uct of­fer­ings and im­proved ser­vices to cus­tomers in its com­bined mar­kets across the Caribbean, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the An­dean re­gions.

That is the promise from of­fi­cials of CWC and Colum­bus who have al­ready com­mit­ted to a US$400 mil­lion in­vest­ment in broad­band ex­pan­sion across their com­bined mar­kets us­ing fi­bre-op­tic tech­nol­o­gy, dri­ving greater in­no­va­tion and ex­pand­ing the merged en­ti­ty's ge­o­graph­ic foot­print. There is al­so the promise of 500 news jobs by 2019.

In ad­di­tion, CWC will lever­age its re­cent ac­qui­si­tion of Groupo Soni­tel in Pana­ma and Colum­bus' ac­qui­si­tion of Lazus in Colom­bia for greater mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion in Colom­bia, Guatemala, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Hon­duras, El Sal­vador, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Puer­to Ri­co and Pe­ru.With the ac­qui­si­tion of Colum­bus, CWC has for­ti­fied is po­si­tion in the re­gion, which an­a­lysts ex­pect will re­sult in com­peti­tors' up­grad­ing their net­works and putting more em­pha­sis on da­ta ser­vices.

The merg­er is in keep­ing with glob­al in­dus­try trends for con­ver­gence of fixed and mo­bile net­works. Op­er­a­tors in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca, as well as re­gion­al com­peti­tors, are ac­quir­ing and con­struct­ing net­works ca­pa­ble of sup­port­ing ever-grow­ing da­ta needs and new video ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

Their com­bined mar­ket in­cludes Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al's dig­i­tal ca­ble tele­vi­sion, broad­band In­ter­net and dig­i­tal land­line tele­pho­ny in T&T, Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, St Lu­cia, Cu­ra­cao and An­tigua; the IT so­lu­tions, man­aged net­work­ing and cloud-based ser­vices of Colum­bus Busi­ness So­lu­tions; and Colum­bus Net­works ca­pac­i­ty and IP ser­vices, cor­po­rate da­ta so­lu­tions and da­ta cen­tre ser­vices in 42 coun­tries.

This is a res­i­den­tial and cor­po­rate client base of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 720,000 cus­tomers now added to CWC's op­er­a­tions in 16 Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries un­der the brands Mas Movil, LIME and BTC al­ready pro­vid­ing mo­bile, broad­band, TV, do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al fixed line ser­vices to more than 5.5 mil­lion cus­tomers.

Fixed as­sets in­clude a ful­ly pro­tect­ed, ringed sub­ma­rine fi­bre op­tic net­work span­ning more than 42,300 km, as well 38,000 km ter­res­tri­al fi­bre and coax­i­al net­work sup­ply­ing ad­vanced telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices.The com­pa­nies, in a cus­tomer char­ter an­nounced last De­cem­ber, promised through their com­bined busi­ness­es to de­liv­er su­pe­ri­or qual­i­ty net­work in­fra­struc­ture, fixed-mo­bile prod­ucts and bun­dles, su­pe­ri­or TV con­tent at com­pet­i­tive rates, and a more at­trac­tive port­fo­lio of prod­ucts and ser­vices.

Time­line of the merg­er

No­vem­ber 6, 2014: Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions plc (CWC) an­nounces a con­di­tion­al agree­ment to ac­quire Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al Inc. The pro­posed ac­qui­si­tion is val­ued at US$3.025 bil­lion. In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Dig­i­cel, CWC's main com­peti­tor in the re­gion, ex­press­es con­cern about the pro­posed deal.

De­cem­ber 4, 2014: Fol­low­ing a meet­ing of the East­ern Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty (Ectel) Coun­cil of Min­is­ters in Saint Lu­cia, the group says it will analyse the im­pact of the pro­posed merg­er in con­junc­tion with the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT).

De­cem­ber 5, 2014: CWC share­hold­ers vote in favour of the ac­qui­si­tion of Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al.

De­cem­ber 7, 2014: Dig­i­cel says it may re-ex­am­ine its in­vest­ment strat­e­gy in the Caribbean if CWC is giv­en the reg­u­la­to­ry go-ahead for its pro­posed buy­out of Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al.

De­cem­ber 10-11, 2014: The Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU) con­venes a spe­cial meet­ing in Port-of-Spain to build re­gion-wide con­sen­sus around the reg­u­la­to­ry is­sues aris­ing from the pro­posed merg­er.

De­cem­ber 12, 2014: CWC and Colum­bus un­veils a cus­tomer char­ter out­lin­ing how their merged com­pa­nies will op­er­ate once giv­en ap­proval, in­clud­ing a US$400 mil­lion in­vest­ment to ex­pand broad­band in­fra­struc­ture across the Caribbean and cre­ation of 500 jobs.

De­cem­ber 13, 2014: The Cari­com Com­pe­ti­tion Com­mis­sion. an­nounces that as part of its busi­ness mon­i­tor­ing ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my it has al­so launched an in­ter­nal pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ment of the pro­posed merg­er and promis­es to an­nounce the find­ings of that re­view.

De­cem­ber 26, 2014: The Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (FTC) in Bar­ba­dos in­vites sub­mis­sions from ser­vice providers, busi­ness­es and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of con­sumer groups on the mer­its and de­mer­its of the pro­posed mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar merg­er.

Jan­u­ary 15, 2015: Ja­maica is the first coun­try in the re­gion to ap­proved ac­qui­si­tion of Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions by Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC). Ap­proval was grant­ed by that is­land's Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­er­gy and Min­ing Min­is­ter Phillip Paulwell.

Feb­ru­ary 19. 2015: The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) says it is strong­ly op­posed to the ac­qui­si­tion of Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al by CWC since it may re­sult in more prof­its be­ing tak­en away from T&T and the Caribbean.

March 26, 2014: TATT ap­proves the ac­qui­si­tion by CWC of 100 per cent of Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al.

March 27, 2015: The Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion of Bar­ba­dos (FTC) grants con­di­tion­al ap­proval for CWC to ac­quire Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al.

March 31, 2015: CWC/Colum­bus an­nounce fi­nal­i­sa­tion of their pro­posed merg­er.