Flow (brand)
Flow is a trade name of the Caribbean telecom Cable & Wireless Communications, used to market cable television, internet, telephone, and wireless services provided by the company. Flow operates services in Barbados, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, St. Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, Montserrat, Dominica, Antigua & Barbuda, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Grenada, Anguilla, Curaçao, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the British Virgin Islands.
Flow was originally established by Columbus Communications as its service brand. Following the acquisition of Columbus by CWC, it was announced that the Flow brand would replace the CWC-originated LIME brand across the merged company, beginning in July 2015.
Wireless
2G
Every region in which FLOW operates a mobile network descended from the former LIME brand. FLOW uses the GSM standard for 2G which is accessible on 850 & 1900 MHz. It provides data connectivity exclusively using GPRS & EDGE. All FLOW markets have extensive GSM coverage.3G & '4G' HSPA+
On June 22, 2009, FLOW launched their first 3G networks in Jamaica.On October 6, 2011, CWC announced the launch of a '4G' HSPA+ network in the Cayman Islands and plans to launch HSPA+ networks in the Bahamas and LIME Barbados. In March 2012, LIME announced the addition of 4G technology in Jamaica. In January 2014, former Centrica chief executive, Phil Bentley took over as CEO of Cable & Wireless Communications. That same year, the company announced a US$250 million investment programme nicknamed 'Project Marlin', aimed at improving CWC's mobile and fixed-line networks. The project would involve a total capital expenditure of over US$1 billion at the end of its 3-year run. The plan began with an announcement of an islandwide HSPA+ network in Jamaica in March 2014.
FLOW's 3G network still forms the basis of its mobile offering, especially in markets where it can extend much further than their LTE network currently can. Their 3G network is also crucial in providing voice services for LTE customers in the absence of a VoLTE solution being deployed in any of FLOW's LTE markets. Further development in this right would be seen where FLOW recently soft-launched HD Voice over its 3G network in Jamaica, a pre-cursor to VoLTE in that market.
In Jamaica, FLOW's largest market, the network covers around 2.8 million people and according to the Office of Utilities Regulations, serves 1 million mobile subscribers. According to internal company counting policies, FLOW Jamaica had 886,200 mobile subscribers in August 2016 and now, as of August 8, 2017, has 933,900 mobile subscribers of which 914,900 are prepaid subscribers. This is CWC's second largest market, with Panama being the largest.
4G LTE
FLOW operates LTE networks in nearly all its markets.Cayman Islands
'Project Marlin' also involved the launch and build out of LTE networks across the company's most competitive markets. CWC's Caymanian business unit initially launched their first LTE network on December 10, 2013 and, received certification from Apple for the use of the iPhone on the network on May 16, 2014. The network initially launched with 100% coverage across the Cayman Islands on LTE Band 17. The network was followed by, days after, Digicel launching their own LTE network, on Band 3, offering twice the speed offered by LIME's network.In August 2016, FLOW became one of 8 carriers in North America and the first Caribbean operator to, after additional network upgrades, have rolled out an LTE Advanced network, followed by Orange in the French West Indies and the Dominican Republic. The LTE-A network adds a 5 MHz LTE channel on Band 2, found in the busy areas within the city of George Town, making a device able to access 2 Carrier Aggregation able to access speeds of up to 112 Mbit/s.
Antigua & Barbuda
FLOW also operates an LTE network in Antigua & Barbuda, which launched on November 24, 2014On August 17, 2017, FLOW's parent company announced that it had completed a Gigabit LTE network trial in Antigua and Barbuda in partnership with Ericsson. The LTE solution tested leveraged network technology such as carrier aggregation, 4x4 MIMO, and higher-order modulation that maximize data speeds for wireless broadband subscribers. The company plans to deploy this network solution in Antigua & Barbuda, making it one of the first countries in the world having access to Gigabit LTE speeds. CWC is also in the middle of LTE deployments in other markets like Jamaica, heightening the possibility of other Gigabit LTE deployments in other Caribbean countries. A contemporaneous lab trial with Verizon, Qualcomm and Ericsson was also ongoing wherein they exceeded the Gigabit barrier, coming up with their own commercial silicon and network infrastructure producing speeds of up to 1.07 Gbit/s on the downlink.
Turks & Caicos and Anguilla
FLOW operates an LTE in The Turks and Caicos Islands and Anguilla on Band 13.British Virgin Islands
FLOW launched an LTE network in the British Virgin Islands on November 17, 2016. The network launched with LTE coverage available across all of the islands, LTE Advanced is available in Road Town, Spanish Town, Tortola, Spanish Island and Beef Island with speeds up to 100 Mbit/s.Jamaica
The network's plans for LTE upgrades were officially announced on January 17, 2016, where the company announced in a press release that it would be rolling out an LTE network in Jamaica. The network was initially planned to be rolled out in the high traffic areas in the Kingston Metropolitan Area and on the North Coast in the resort city of Montego Bay and the resort town of Ocho Rios. The company was, however, countered by its competitor, Digicel Jamaica, which launched its LTE network on June 9, 2016, in Kingston and a portion of Montego Bay. In July, FLOW announced that it had applied to the Spectrum Management Authority for additional LTE spectrum to provide a 'faster service'. FLOW subsequently acquired AWS-1 Blocks D and E to buttress their pre-existing Block F spectrum. In December 2016, FLOW went live with an initial 12 LTE cell sites in the Kingston Metropolitan Area. According to FLOW Jamaica's former Managing Director, Garfield Sinclair, the company's new parent, Liberty Global is focused on mobile data.On August 20, 2017, the company announced that it was launching an additional 144 LTE sites covering Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Mandeville by October 2017, making FLOW the operator with the largest LTE footprint in the country. FLOW also expanded coverage in the Kingston Metro Area, upgrading sites in the township of Portmore and the major town of Spanish Town, which went on-air in October 2017. This effort was a part of a near 200 LTE site rollout across the island, availing the major towns and cities in Jamaica with LTE coverage by the end of 2017, with the goal of achieving comprehensive coverage by 2018.
In January 2018, the network announced that it had deployed over 170 LTE sites across the island.
The network resides primarily on 20 MHz of AWS spectrum, availing customers with speeds of up to 150 Mbit/s on the downlink and 50 Mbit/s on the uplink. In some locales, FLOW has additional capacity on LTE Band 2 enabling customers access to their LTE Advanced network, with speeds of up to 300 Mbit/s. The network sits atop a nationwide deployment of LTE Band 12, pushing theoretical aggregate network speeds up to 337.5 Mbit/s.
FLOW's rollout of LTE Advanced in Jamaica continued with intentions to extend LTE coverage to 87% of the Jamaican population by the end of 2018 with a future target of covering 95% of the population by 2020.
Barbados
After conducting its first test call in October 2016, FLOW Barbados officially launched its LTE network on March 22, 2017. The network at launch had a total of 35 sites active spread over Band 2 and 5 LTE, making this FLOW's third LTE Advanced network deployment.St. Lucia
FLOW launched St. Lucia's first LTE network, with availability in the capital city, Castries, the town of Vieux Fort, home of Hewanorra International Airport to the south of the island and the old capital & tourist town of Soufrière to the west.The network is available on LTE Band 13 with a maximum theoretical speed of 75 Mbit/s down and 25 Mbit/s up.
St. Kitts & Nevis
On September 29, 2017, FLOW launched St. Kitts & Nevis' first LTE network, with availability in the capital city, Basseterre, St. Peter's and Bird Rock in St. Kitts as well as Charlestown in Nevis.The network is available on LTE Band 13 with a maximum theoretical speed of 75 Mbit/s down and 25 Mbit/s up.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines
In December 2018, FLOW launched its LTE network in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with availability in the capital city, Kingstown, and nearby surrounding areas.The network is available on LTE Band 13 with a maximum theoretical speed of 75 Mbit/s down and 25 Mbit/s up.
Future Footprint Expansion
FLOW currently operates in 2 markets with no wireless offerings, Trinidad and Curaçao. FLOW plans to add a mobile network to their portfolio in Trinidad. The company applied to the governing telecoms body, Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago, in 2014 for a mobile license. To date, however, FLOW has yet to receive a license despite being named as the recipient of the license being tendered by TATT. They plan to build an LTE network as well despite incumbents, bmobile and Digicel, having well established mobile customer bases. FLOW cites its experience in other markets, to include previously launched LTE networks in other markets in addition to newly built networks in Jamaica and Barbados as an impetus to get TATT to issue the license. FLOW's parent company, Cable & Wireless Communications, is a minority shareholder in incumbent TSTT, however, services are not branded as C&W but as bmobile, CWC's former consumer brand from 2003 to 2008.Plans for a mobile network in Curaçao came to the fore when Cable & Wireless Communications acquired UTS Curaçao and other UTS business units across the Dutch Caribbean. The Curaçao business unit of UTS will be combined with FLOW's existing operations there with the promise of bringing faster LTE speeds and coverage with an improved customer experience.
5G
On July 17, 2017, FLOW's parent company, Cable & Wireless Communications, in collaboration with their parent, Liberty Global, announced that they had conducted a trial of LTE-A Pro technology in Antigua & Barbuda. The company announced that upon installation, Antigua & Barbuda will become the first country in the Caribbean to be availed of an LTE-A Pro network, capable of speeds up to 800 Mbit/s. In October 2017, the company will be testing a 5G prototype network, designed to deliver wireless data connections of around 2 - 5 Gbit/s. The testing and deployment is being done in collaboration with long time business partner and supplier, Ericsson.Mobile Benchmarks & Awards
Based on drive tests carried out by engineering consulting company, MSI Americas, FLOW was rated as the top carrier in the 2 tested countries; Jamaica and Barbados. In Jamaica, FLOW was placed ahead of its competitor in terms of radio frequency quality, 3G throughput, and higher 3G retention. FLOW was also rated the faster mobile network in the country, with users to experience on average, above 3 Mbit/s on the HSPA+ network. FLOW Barbados also placed ahead of its competitor there as well in said categories as well.In addition, FLOW Barbados was also ranked by Ookla as being the best ISP and Mobile Network in Barbados. FLOW was also rated by Ookla as Cayman's fastest Mobile & Broadband network.
In 2016, P3 Group, a management consultancy headquartered in Aachen, Germany, conducted benchmarks in 6 FLOW Territories. The finding of these benchmarks concluded that FLOW networks were on average 90% better than their competitor, Digicel, in terms of call setup, download & upload speed, latency & video streaming. Raw scores showed that FLOW also outranked the competition in voice and data performance at the very least, twice.
In Q2-Q3 of 2018, FLOW Jamaica received the distinction by Ookla's Speedtest Awards of being Jamaica's Fastest Mobile Network, with customers seeing speeds averaging at 22.66 Mbit/s on the downlink and 9.62 Mbit/s on the uplink.
Radio frequency summary
Tariffs
FLOW utilizes different tariffs for every market they operate in. In their Jamaican market, for example, FLOW employs aggressive pricing strategies. FLOW offers prepaid calling rates of $4.99 JMD or US$0.04 per minute for on-net and off-net calls as well as calls to the United States, Canada and Landlines in the UK through the "Talk-EZ" plan as standard. The rate plan goes even lower to $3.99 JMD or US$0.02 for Postpaid subscribers and Prepaid subscribers who subscribe to a data plan eligible for FLOW 'MVP' i.e. data plans that last for a duration of 7, 15 days. FLOW's tariffs for roaming are standardized for all postpaid customers in all markets. Prepaid customers across all markets have specialized roaming plans which last for 7, 14 or 30 day durations. Each plan includes a set allotment of data, talk and text in addition to free voicemail and incoming calls. FLOW recently began offering data roaming packages branded as 'TravelPass' which allows subscribers to access 100, 250 or 500 MB of 4G/LTE roaming data for a duration of seven days across 47 countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Ghana & Ireland as well as the entire Caribbean. The company also allows their subscribers to use their local data allotment in any FLOW market they roam on for no additional cost, a feature called 'FLOW Data'.Broadband, Pay-TV & Landline
Legacy Copper Broadband Network
FLOW's legacy copper network dates back to its predecessor, LIME. It could support speeds from 512 kbit/s up to 8 Mbit/s for ADSL. Beginning under 'Project Marlin', upgrades were undertaken in some markets, allowing some customers broadband access at up to 48 Mbit/s on the downlink in places such as Anguilla and the TCI. The company leveraged Very High-Speed Digital Subscriber Line technology to retrofit its existing plant and equipment to service modern customer demands.In other territories, like Jamaica, FLOW also commissioned islandwide VDSL2 upgrades; an effort to afford most of its rural subscribers speeds of up to at least 25 Mbit/s on the downlink, and IPTV capability. This upgrade also had the effect of reaching the company's video and broadband penetration beyond that of the company's primarily urban HFC offering.
Cable TV, HFC & Broadband
FLOW operates vast and expansive HFC networks in the former Columbus Communications markets of Barbados, Curaçao, Grenada, Jamaica, Trinidad, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent. Using the D3 standard, FLOW delivers speeds ranging from a minimum download speed of 15 Mbit/s up to 500 Mbit/s. The network also follows conventions shared with its sister companies such as Virgin Media Ireland & UK, Ziggo, UPC in its choice of CPE; a custom Arris cable modem, capable of speeds up to 1 Gbit/s. The box's nomenclature 'FLOW Connectbox' also finds similarity with its sister brands like Ziggo, with Virgin Media being the only exception with its 'Superhub 3'. The company will likely follow with group-wide convention in regard to the box's successor, as is deployed in the UK, Switzerland, and other Liberty Global geographies, when FLOW moves toward deploying D3.1 across its footprint.FLOW serves customers with a Hybrid IPTV video solution branded as 'FLOW EVO'. This service also includes Live TV Rewind, Replay, Pause, Cloud PVR, and video on demand. FLOW EVO can also be found in the Bahamas, where BTC Bahamas opts to brand its Pay-TV product as such.
Fibre and Wireless Broadband
, in 2014, began rolling out a Fiber-to-the-Home network in Barbados. Now complete, the network now offers speeds up to 1 Gbit/s, thanks to an all fiber optic network. They also have a FTTH network in numerous areas with greenfield deployment in Jamaica and across all of Grand Cayman as well.The network also deploys its Hybrid IPTV, FLOW EVO product over-top its GPON networks.
FLOW also operates DEKAL Wireless, a rural Jamaican municipal Wi-Fi network operator, on behalf of Cable and Wireless Communications.
Value Added Services & Partnerships
The company is also a partner with Wikimedia and allows its Prepaid and Postpaid subscribers access to Wikipedia free of charge. Another company they partner with is Deezer, a music streaming service which selected FLOW as their exclusive Caribbean partner. FLOW allows its Prepaid and Postpaid subscribers across all their markets to access the free subscription tier as well as Deezer's premium tier. The company allows payment for the premium tier by either deducting the converted charge from the attached wireless account or charging for the service on said wireless account monthly. FLOW also has a with curated playlists, powered by Deezer. In Jamaica, FLOW's prepaid subscribers see free allotments of up to 1.2 GB per tariff for free streaming on Deezer. Plans also come with WhatsApp audio calling data, leveraged through the company's partnership with WhatsApp.FLOW was also Apple's only wireless partner for most of the Anglophonic Caribbean until 2016. The partnership began in June 2011 when CWC acquired wireless partner status with Apple. The company then, through its former consumer brand, LIME, began selling the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS. This partnership happened to coincide with previous Caribbean wireless partner, Claro and its departure from the Jamaican market after merging with Digicel Jamaica. FLOW also sells the iPad and the Apple Watch in some retail outlets. Rival, Digicel, recently obtained wireless partner status with Apple in Jamaica and The Cayman Islands, as a result, FLOW no longer enjoys Apple exclusivity in many other markets across the region.
FLOW offers apps such as FLOW ToGo and FLOW Football. FLOW mobile subscribers can also access information about their wireless account by using the MyFLOW self-care app which allows for purchasing a data plan or a data bolt-on, track minutes used, a call's cost and purchase and track a roaming plan's usage. It is available for iOS and Android users in all of their markets.
Recently, the company converged its services into a single platform named FLOW ID. allows subscribers to access exclusive content from FLOW as well as billing, payment, multi-account management and other pertinent functions.
FLOW also offers an airtime loan service called FLOW Lend. FLOW Lend is an app available for iOS and Android which allows prepaid FLOW subscribers to request an airtime advance for their account. It is a partnership between Cable & Wireless Communications and San Francisco-based tech company, Juvo.
FLOW was also an official broadcaster of the 2016 Summer Olympics held in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil for the Caribbean region. The games were broadcast on 3 new FLOW Sports Channels in Full HD, available to all of their pay-TV subscribers for the duration of the games. Mobile and Broadband subscribers were able to access the games on-demand or live using the FLOW Rio 2016 Extra App. The app allowed customers to access any game being played at the time of access in live HD as well as medal counts for the user's selected region.
Retail & Brand Design
The old Flow and LIME operated numerous stores in each of their own markets. During the brand redesign phase, CWC commissioned retail design experts, Shikatani Lacroix, to come up with a new look and feel of the brand's stores. The new store format was unveiled at the FLOW Fairview store in Montego Bay, Jamaica on October 17, 2015.Since then, FLOW has evolved its brand identity and design language to one more closely aligned with its Panamanian sister company, Cable and Wireless Panamá, under the 'Moments That Move Us' campaign that had spanned the Caribbean between 2018 and 2019. The simpler, more digitally-oriented brand design, borrows from +Movil's brand elements and also followed with Always-On/Unlimited mobile tariffs and expanded Broadband offerings.