Interview - FLOW Cayman

Sustainable Business Magazine speaks to Rob Mayo-Smith, Country Manager at Flow Cayman Islands, about providing the Caymans with quick and reliable connectivity, giving back to communities, and business during COVID-19.

By Daniel Baksi

When Flow Cayman Islands was established back in 1955, it was the start of an era. With its vision of connecting the Caymans to the rest of the world, Flow set about transforming the country’s telecommunications landscape, delivering the first mobiles to the islands, before later becoming the first company to introduce fiber optic. In 1996, Flow connected the Caymans to Jamaica with what was at the time the world’s largest undersea cable. In the early 2000s, Flow innovated yet again with the introduction of Blackberry, and in 2011, became the first provider in the Caymans to operate a 4G network.

As the company continued its drive to modernize, Flow acquired a local business provider a of IT solutions, now packaged as IT Outsource to customers across the Cayman Islands – a unique development amongst Flow’s numerous regional branches. “Most of our businesses have what we’d call an ICT or business-solutions zone, but ours is specific, providing all sorts of products that a customer may want to outsource,” explains Rob Mayo-Smith from Flow Cayman Islands. “It’s a special part of our service, helping us to support our customers with more complex IT issues, whether that’s disaster recovery, or regular network oversight and maintenance.”

As the Cayman Islands’ only provider of mobile, text and fiber services, Flow is continually working to ensures its customers enjoy a fast and reliable service. “We’re already blessed with a high-quality network, but our customers’ expectations are always growing, and we’ve had a lot of requests to accelerate our fiber network,” says Mr. Mayo-Smith. “For us, responding to those expectations is key if we want to keep our customers satisfied. We already have fiber in most of the Cayman Islands, with penetration currently at 55%. But it’s our aim to reach all of the islands.”

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The build-up of fiber across the Cayman Islands is a major project for Flow, and the company is hard at work replacing its supply of already-laid copper. “As a technology, fiber is newer and more reliable,” says Mr. Mayo-Smith. “As a result, it’s faster, and higher quality, and alleviates the issue of connection faults. “Once we’ve rolled out the fiber across the island, we then individually upgrade our customers from the copper that they’re currently on, onto the fiber we’ve installed. For the customers, the benefits are obvious. fiber will mean that when working or studying from home, or doing video-calling in general, the quality is a lot better. Likewise, if you’re streaming a movie, you’ll be able to get higher definition.”

Over the years, Flow has played an active role in supporting community projects across the Cayman Islands. “Community support is in our bloodline,” says Mr. Mayo-Smith. “It’s an element of our operations that we take significant pride in, being a part of the community, and giving back wherever we can. Among our programs, we provide scholarship funding for young Caymanians who are currently enrolled in university, and offer apprenticeships at our own offices, giving young people the opportunity to learn about telecommunications. We even see many of them then joining the business afterwards, if they find it’s a career they really want to pursue.”

Each year, Flow’s annual mission week provides a focal point for its community activity. “Particularly in 2020, the country had been impacted heavily by severe hurricanes,” explains Mr. Mayo-Smith. “During mission week, we raised funds, donated our time, and encouraged our customers donate non-perishable items, including clothing and shoes. It was a commitment that we embraced as a business, and individually through the contributions of our staff members.”

Flow has also been supporting its customers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. “The last year has been a challenging one for many of our customers, with lots of people struggling financially,” says Mr. Mayo-Smith. “By helping where we can and ensuring our customers stay connected, we can prove the difference. Our efforts can carry them through tough times, such as losing a job – a known reality for many people. Over the last year, we offered free upgrades for all our customers, particularly during the country’s lockdown, which ran from April to late August. Until that stage, the closure of schools meant that young people were studying from home, and most adults were working from home. We could see these changes in the traffic: the data that we were carrying over our network dropped in Georgetown, and instead started picking up in the Caymans’ more suburban and rural areas. With that, came a new responsibility. We recognized the need to help individuals access greater bandwidth, in order to meet their own demands, and to keep everyone connected at fast speeds, at the same time.”

Prospects remain bright in the Caymans, where the government’s tough but successful approach to the pandemic has kept community spread of the virus to a minimum. “As a country, we’re generally well-equipped for working from home,” says Mr. Mayo-Smith. “A large volume of the international business located here is organized within the financial and profes-

sional services sector, including a lot of companies headquartered in the United States. As they still feel the effects abroad, not everyone has returned to the physical workplace – but locally, we are seeing a lot of people making the return. The Caymans also has quite an advanced vaccine process, which is going well.”

Not everything is returning to normal, however. “Regardless of how things develop from here, the biggest change we’ve seen is a bigger demand for products like Microsoft Teams and Zoom,” explains Mr. Mayo-Smith. “Likewise, we’ve seen an increase in the amount of visualization and e-commerce in the community, and we expect that demand to remain. For us in the long-term, that means that all our customers are demanding faster, and more reliable connectivity. It demonstrates precisely why we’re accelerating full fiber to the Cayman Islands as a whole, as we look to deliver the connectivity required to keep our customers connected.”

The Caymans’ fiber roll-out is not the end for Flow; the company is already looking to 5G as the next evolution in the Islands’ mobile network. “We pride ourselves on being a company with so many firsts,” says Mr. Mayo-Smith. “It’s our goal to keep the island ahead with breakthrough and cutting-edge technology, so that we can continue to uphold what we’re known for: being a reliable phone service, with a powerful network, all the while keeping our customers first. In that regard, 5G is something that is very relevant, and we’d love to bring it to the Cayman Islands at some stage in the future. 5G enables faster connectivity, either on-the-move or at home. It’s potentially game-changing for businesses that rely on fast telecommunications on-themove, and it also has relevance for security services, and for customer convenience. For our consumers, it means that any of their devices will be able to connect seamlessly, from wherever they are in the country. We believe it can mark a new era of data speed on the move.” c