Barbados-based telecoms group Columbus International has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kelcom International, which operates cable-based services under the name Karib Cable in St Lucia, St Vincent & the Grenadines and Antigua. Karib Cable is also licensed in Barbados where it is in the early stages of network deployment, and in total the group’s HFC cable systems pass approximately 110,000 homes and serve close to 60,000 customers offering cable television, high speed internet and telephony services. ‘The acquisition of Kelcom marks another important milestone for Columbus as we expand our service footprint to deliver our brand of services across the Caribbean region,’ said Brendan Paddick, chairman and CEO of Columbus.
Upon completion of this transaction, Columbus’ retail triple-play services – largely offered under the ‘Flow’ brand – will span eight countries across the Caribbean region, pass more than 750,000 households and businesses and serve in excess of 500,000 retail customers. Columbus is a privately held company providing digital cable television, broadband internet and digital landline telephony in Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados (where it recently bought TeleBarbados), Grenada and Curacao under the Flow brand, and corporate data and cloud-based services under its Columbus Business Solutions wing. Through its wholly owned subsidiary Columbus Networks the operator provides capacity and IP services, corporate data solutions and data centre hosting throughout 25 countries in the Caribbean, Central American and Andean region. It operates a fully protected, ringed submarine fibre-optic network spanning nearly 18,000km, and 24,000km of terrestrial fibre and coaxial infrastructure. Columbus has 2,100 employees.