Philipsburg: --- The United Telecommunications Services (cooperate) has netted 8.1 million guilders in profit for the year 2008. Making the disclosure to the media on Monday was Managing Director of UTS St. Maarten Glen Carty. Carty said this is the third straight year UTS has been making a good profit. He said beginning 2006, 2007 as well as 2008 the company has earned themselves a profit. Carty said the company whose head offices are in Curacao managed to close their books in a timely fashion as laid down by the laws for government owned companies.
While Carty could not provide the exact figures as to how much St. Maarten has contributed to the profits for the year 2008 he did say he is certain the island contributed to at least one third of the figure. UTS are providing its services throughout the Netherlands Antilles, (St. Maarten, Saba, Statia, and Curacao) as well as St. Kitts, Suriname and Holland.
Carty said the company is showing signs of progress in St. Kitts this last year as they are now adapting to the marketing of that island while in Suriname the market is fairly new but they have recorded losses this year.
Carty said UTS St. Maarten has been doing extremely well since the launch of Chippie where they have over 30,000 in prepaid clients. He could not provide the figures of the post paid customers which he said is growing by the day due to demands and sales of the Blackberry.
Carty said one of the best decisions the company made in 2008 was the purchase of Caribserve internet provider company which now forms part of the UTS cooperate. One of the main focuses of the company Carty said is customer care and the services they provide to their customers, which includes the new stores that was recently opened up.
Carty said to date the Chippie services are still growing while the Blackberry the newest kid on the market is a fantastic component to the chippie family. Carty further explains that in the beginning the Blackberry was not doing as they had expected since there was no roaming services available. Roaming is now available in the United States, the Netherlands and all of the islands where cable and wireless are available. Carty said they are still in the process of signing roaming agreements for the Blackberry services in other parts of the world including Europe. The managing director said it is incredible to see the role that the Blackberry is playing since it was used in the formation of the new government. UTS will soon be providing GSM services in St. Barths as well.
UTS are now working on their website which would be used to provide much needed information to their customers. He said in the near future clients of UTS would be able to pay their bills online. The company he said is also working on their call center help desk since they have been receiving complaints from customers who are not able to make contact with UTS via phone easily. When this service is activated Carty said customers from the neighboring Saba, Statia and St. Kitts would be able to call in free of charge to gather information on the services they provide as well as billing.
Another vision the company has is to try and call each and everyone of their post paid customers to inform them about their due date to avoid disconnections. Carty said even though he knows that would be burdensome and risky to call everyone in their post paid database the company he said is willing to try and provide that personal touch with their customers.
Another priority for UTS this year is focus more on the French side of the island said Carty. He said the only reason they did not place enormous focus on the French side of the island was because they were busy fixing the glitches and upgrading the Dutch side market.
Carty said the company now has someone with French background on the management team this person he said would be working on getting UTS on board the French islands since the packages do have some differences. Carty said the French side did help them develop their sales on the Dutch side and now the time has come for them to increase their sales on that side of the island.
Another focus he said would be implementing of the UMTS -3 G. Carty said UTS would be the first cellular and internet provider to launch the 3-G on the islands St. Maarten, Saba and Statia. When this new service is launched Carty said Saba will go down in history for being the smallest island with such capabilities. The testing for the 3-G UMTS will begin at the end of July. A service that would provide mobile internet, this service will soon be able on the French side of the island also.
Carty said the company invested millions to improve their services throughout the islands such as providing services to their clients at the Princess Juliana International Airport, something they have been working on for sometime.
The company has managed to increase their coverage in several areas of the island by adding more cell sites and has already installed the necessary features for the launching of the 3-G. The company is also focusing on training their employees so that they can be fully acquainted with the services they provide.
Some of the other plans and projects in the pipeline are the securing the grounding of their facilities since the islands are in the hurricane belt. The company already constructed the cell sites in Saba since there are no fiber optic cables to those two islands. The company also invested 3.1 million guilders in upgrading their technology for the islands and USD $10 million dollars for their billing system an effort they are making to pave the road for other services in the pipeline such as being the best in customer care.
Roy Richardson from Caribserve who was also present at the press conference said that Caribserve who is part of the UTS family said they are largest broad band service provider on the island and they are continuing to increase their subscriber base with continuous growth. He said the company has been making major investments o consolidated the internet services that was provided by UTS prior to their merging.
Caribserve he said has 17 tower sites all of which had their capacity increased. Caribserve he said will soon be introducing the WI-Max to compliment the WIFI. This new service he said will be implemented by the end of the year. Richardson said since Caribserve is continuing to conduct research they feel WI-Max would be an asset to users on St. Maarten. He said UMTS would be seamless roaming WI-Max will the service for the next generation.