C&W discusses World Cup, telco services

interview by MICHELLE McDONALD

Cable & Wireless, an official sponsor of the now concluded ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 came in for harsh criticisms from journalists attending the Group Stage matches in Jamaica. During an interview with CWC's Commercial Director Stephen Price, he confirmed that CWC was not responsible for setting internet rates – the source of the discontentment. CaribbeanCricket.com was able to speak with some of Grenada's Cable & Wireless representatives during their Super Eight matches.

Information provided by Cable & Wireless states that "a cross the Eastern Caribbean alone, the company has spent close to EC$5 million to provide a high speed Internet service and first world telecommunications services to ensure that journalists who are covering the game can send their stories to their respective news agencies via mobile , broadband or landline services."

Listening in were Pat Bynoe-Clarke – Communications Consultant based in the Cayman Islands, and Sheldon Keens-Douglas – Marketing Communications Manager for Grenada. We also asked whether Cable & Wireless would be interested in sponsoring the West Indies cricket team when the current contract with rival Digicel expires.

MM: During the design phase of this venue, was Cable & Wireless invited to be a part of that, in terms of what their requirements would be in order to provide voice, data, and internet services?

AS: We were given adequate notice to be part of what would ultimately be the requirements. We gave our feedback so we were part of the process.

Any challenges faced leading up to the start of matches here in Grenada?

AS: From a technical perspective, we had a few challenges. The scope of our involvement changed, and changed a few times. It was something we accepted, we worked with it, and today, with a lack of any technical problems on a day to day basis since our games in Grenada started, showed that we accommodated the LOC.

I don't hear any of the journalists complaining so I guess everything is working for them.

AM: Let me just add to that. We took the project very very seriously at the highest level of the organization. From a very early stage, we ascertained the human resources required. We had people dedicated full time on the project, so we took them away from their normal jobs. For one year, we dedicated them to the LOC which was important because the structure of the LOC with the Chinese engineers, posed an interesting dynamic, and we felt that we needed to commit. And we are very fortunate to have staff who can be easily transferred and not have the business crumble.

I was just going to ask if you had to get people to replace those who you dedicated to the project.

AM: No, within the department we had people to do set-up and we felt it was a great learning experience, a great developmental opportunity for those people and I think by and large, as a company, we felt that the World Cup was just as much ours as it was Grenada's. As the leading telecommunications company, we felt it was our World Cup, and as a sponsor as well.

I will come to the matter of sponsorship later on. Give the readers an idea of what it takes for me to be able to go to the Press Box, plug in my laptop and have internet, or lift up the telephone and have voice.

AS: We worked under the guidance of Rushmans and some of the other entities involved in the cricket, who used their expertise from the last Cricket World Cup to give us a feel for what was the quantity of Media we should expect; what were the types of services they would require; what were the speeds in those services they would require.

If I can interject here and ask, based on the matches that the stadium had hosted since 1999 when they first started, were those requirements far different?

AS: The requirements were far different. Before, a lot of the requirements we had were for voice services…telephone lines. Back in 1999, we put up the equivalent of an Internet Café where people could simply come in and use the internet at the end of the day or at lunch time or the drinks break.

I know we didn't have a separate Media Centre different from the Press Box.

AS: Yes. That stadium back then, the media all stayed in one place. With ICC requirements, there are separate broadcast areas, media areas, bureau services. We now had requirements for pitch side access for photographers. All those things were never requirements before.

Can you explain pitch side access?

AS: pitch side access is where we have the photographers at long-on, long-off...

You have the photographers who take the pictures and from how we've been informed, they need to load them into a database and the picture that's the best picture gets loaded onto different websites. So it's almost like a competition. You now have people who need to load information instantly, and that's how they make their money, by getting their pictures in there and as such there is the need to give them facilities and access from where they sit.

AM: In the past, there was a person called a 'Runner' and they would take the picture cards and run to the Media Centre and have them transferred, but what I think has happened globally is people want to be online wherever they are. Right now, there are cameras with WiFi where you can actually take the picture and send it instantly, without changing the device. A lot of those professional photographers rely on this service, and as a result of that, we have to extend our internet access to almost anywhere in the stadium they are, to facilitate that process.

Right. Angus, continue on the technical aspects...

AS: With a lot of those changes, it required a lot more infrastructure to be put in. In addition to it being cricket, you're talking about ICC World Cup so it involves working with Rushmans where we have to provide a Wide Area Network (WAN) which gives interconnectivity in all the locations, so that from the Accreditation process for the likes of yourself and us to get into the grounds, to the ticketing process, so that when you swipe the tickets, you get that green light to come back and tell you 'go' in the turnstiles, all of those things require interconnectivity back into all the nine venues and that is new infrastructure that was not required before.

On top of this, because of the extent of the ICC requirements, you now have to put in a lot of redundancy into the network to ensure you understand all your areas of risk, all your areas of exposure and you make sure there is that back up part that if any one fails, life continues.

That's what you mean by redundancy? Please explain that.

AS: Whether it goes from power, whether it goes from connectivity between turnstiles to enable one turnstile to work and the next turnstile to work, you need to have that other part where everything can continue as normal if there is any breakage at any point in the ground, at any point in the network, where the wider system is concerned. So it was a much more complex infrastructure and network we had to put in, in comparison to what existed before.

The difference is the magnitude of the game, the requirements of the game, the standards of the game, because this is the World Cup and there are different standards from when the West Indies is having a home or away series.

In terms of number of stations in the Press Box, and I am not too familiar with the previous Press Box, is it a lot more now?

AS: Yes it's a lot more. Previously, if you had a home series, you normally had one team playing against the West Indies. As such you had the media associated with the particular countries. With the World Cup, you're looking at many more teams, so you are looking at varied media from the team countries, and on top of that, you have interested persons like the pitch side photographers. Previously where we catered for 10 – 20 journalists, the requirements coming in for CWC had expectations for over 200 persons associated with media houses.

But for any one match here, I haven't seen as much as maybe 70 people.

AS: That is correct, and it is something that one must have expected depending on the progress of the games, but at the end of the day, when you put in an infrastructure, as a telecommunications company, you have to cater for what can be expected as the maximum. So our infrastructure that we laid and the cost for it, was against what would be the maximum requirements. As the games changed, and we saw the exit of India and Pakistan, that changed the dynamics of everything, not only from media requirements but the advertisers and the contracts. So if you have seen a reduction in media presence, I think it's based on which teams are going forward.

I would imagine that as a company, Cable & Wireless does not do this for charity and with the exit of India and Pakistan, Cable & Wireless would have taken a loss throughout the region.

AS: It's not a question of not doing this for charity. We have always sponsored, we have always been a good corporate citizen in not only cricket, but in many other areas within each of the countries in which we operate. But like I said, the sunken cost for having to put in the infrastructure against the expectations, against the requirements for the ICC, was a cost we had to bear and which we continue to work with the different governments in how we could recover that cost.

We would not go on notice to say that the media is not as present as we expect, but it doesn't bear on the fact that the infrastructure was required from the onset as we kept in line with the ICC requirements, and we need to recover our costs and we are trying to do that in different ways. I do not think we would at the end of the day, but it's not a question of charity, and at the same time of trying to bleed anyone to recover.

'Mulct' I think is the term that was used!

AS: I am not aware of that term. [laughing]

I imagine that because C & W is represented throughout the region that there must have been some collective way in which the company approached the pricing, the services and all of that. What I found interesting is that as I moved from venue to venue, and this is my fourth venue, the price for internet changed.

Talking daily rates, in Jamaica the set-up fee was US$50 and the daily rate US$25. In Antigua wireless was free. In St Kitts, there was no set-up charge, I just paid US$25. Here, I was initially quoted US$100 for set-up plus US$30. The set-up fee was subsequently reduced to US$30. Can you just explain the disparity in internet pricing? And I am talking about the lowest speed.

AS: Yes, they are all C&W units, but again we are talking about operating in different countries where there are different perspectives in each country. There are different economies of scale even though we are all in the Caribbean. There are different requirements for different games. Requirements then turn into the level of infrastructure you need to put in.

You mentioned about the likes of St Kitts. They had technical problems and Cable & Wireless as a company is always interested in the end result, which was to ensure that the Caribbean governments and people have a good World Cup. So if we have technical glitches, what you need to have is people who are satisfied and can get access to the services they need to use to broadcast, to take photographs and to relay messages to media houses. If there is a glitch, the game continues, and the game continuing meant if you cannot bill for this or there is a technical problem, you give the service.

But as a company, we approached it with one voice, we are one company, we looked at rates together as one team from Trinidad right up to Jamaica and even including the likes of Guyana with GTT. We tried to approach it so that just as we had the CARICOM One Space for travel, we tried to make it one price for services no matter where you travelled.

But that didn't happen.

AS: Like I said, as the games progressed, things changed, requirements changed and there was a need for some of the C&W countries to re look at the offer, re look at the progress of the games, re look at the quantity of media coming in what their requests were, how it changed. St Kitts for example got requests for eight persons for pitch side access….that turned out to be 24. We had to use the learnt lessons from each of the areas to decide how we needed to change the same common approach. We had to make sure that we still satisfy the customers.

Yes, we did have that set-up fee here in Grenada but we listened to people and when the complaint was drawn, we reduced it to the US$30.

The question I would have is why US$50 in Jamaica and US$100 in Grenada. Did it cost twice as much to provide the infrastructure here as it did in Jamaica?

AS: The cost varied across islands and across the situations that existed in the islands. For instance in Jamaica, Trelawny was new, Sabina was refurbished. In St Lucia, that's almost a brand new stadium there so there was minimal work required.

In Grenada, this is a brand new stadium built after Hurricane Ivan destroyed the previous one, so the infrastructure that had to go in was all brand new, while in some of the other islands they just did tweaks or changes to what was already there so our costs in Grenada was quite significant. It was a cost to C&W of over EC$2.1m that we had to invest to put this infrastructure in.

That cost has some input into the cost of the services and I can tell you that even though it had some input into the cost, it was still below what was the actual cost of the service.

The very few and minor problems we have had today shows why we picked to use fibre optic technology rather than some wireless technology that so many people may talk about that could have been used.

That would have been cheaper too.

AS: The wireless would have been cheaper. It just increases the area of risk and the failure points and for something as important as CWC 2007 for the Caribbean governments, people and ourselves as the exclusive provider of telecommunications services, is not something we would take to chance that you save on costs but you increase your areas of risk and exposure to failure.

The routes that we took to create that redundant part from our main exchanges, have a huge sunken cost but they are reliable technology and they will work and we have the technical experience to make them work.

AM: We also looked at attendance and potential places for people to gather and we had to augment our capacity for mobile. In the stadium, we have a mobile cell site that we brought on board just for here. If the stadium is full to capacity, because this is an unusual crowd, we would have had to extend our network even though we didn't have a game everyday.

So if all the C&W users turned on their phone and made a call at the same time, you wouldn't get "System busy."

AM: Correct. We have also increased our capacity in areas like the Esplanade, Morne Rouge, Grand Anse, where we thought there was going to be, so that is new cost.

AS: Those are costs you don't put a figure to to recover. It's all about making sure that everyone can complete that call.

AM: And you only know you have bad technology when you need it. Only when you can't make a call you say 'what's going on!.

So all of this infrastructure, that will remain for future series?

AS: It is not our intention to remove the network. The entire network that is here will remain. There may be elements of the network decommissioned and re-commissioned depending on the particular event taking place. Whether it's another World Cup, whether it's Carifta Games or any other sporting activity to take place at this ground and by extension the track & field section, the services are world class and they are here to stay.

It means though, especially for cricket, that it really would be a good thing for Grenada to be on the roster for the home tours and of course there is the concern that with so many new stadia to choose from and with the amount of cricket being played in the region not increasing, that you're all going to be jostling.

AS: That's right.

Let's talk sponsorship now. Has the sponsorship paid off for the company?

AM: We would say emphatically yes, not financially though. Yes because of our relationship with West Indies cricket for the last 18 – 20 years, our sponsorship over that period is $35m. We believe that there is a very very strong relationship in the history and the psyche of the people between cricket and Cable & Wireless. We felt that it was an excellent opportunity for us to be associated again with the event, because of what cricket means to the Caribbean.

We felt as the leading telecommunications provider in the Caribbean from the Cayman Islands to Trinidad & Tobago, we are interwoven into the fabric of the people and so is cricket, so it was a natural cause for us.

The motive for sponsoring and being involved in cricket, it cannot be financial. Just the cost of the infrastructure alone is a small part of it because you know that any sponsorship that you embark on is multi faceted. The first facet is the cost of buying that association and the other bit is trying to mobilize promotional activities to take advantage of that.

Our sponsorship is not only the pride for being associated with the World Cup, not only the discounted rates, but we've tried to facilitate the teams, so on the airport when you come in now, you receive a free SIM as a visitor with credit ,and for the teams we go as far as US$25.

I was in the team hotel at the Rex and I noticed you had a booth there.

AM: Correct. We also extended ourselves in allocating staff to be at the main hotel to deal with phone issues, to top up their handsets to answer questions, give them SIMS. We have also equipped the hotel with WiFi and we are not charging for those things. So we are hoping that the media will realize that our sponsorship extends on a broader level and a US$100 set up fee, won't be used like a gun to our head.

Like Angus said, our objective because of who we are and our history, we really wanted to play our part. We took the slogan of having the 'Best World Cup' ever seriously. So we facilitated everybody so that after the event, everybody can say Cable & Wireless really was a valid partner and we really helped the success of the games.

From the perspective of Cable & Wireless Grenada, are you pleased with how it has gone for you generally?

AM: Yes we are pleased, we are definitely pleased and we are hoping members of your fraternity are pleased. We really have had to re-allocate our resources. Right now, we have people at the fan zone. We had to hire temporary staff to serve the airports. We also put hot spots in the marinas. We also have dedicated staff to come in from 5:00am until 10:00pm.

We also have our staff who were interested in being a CWC VIBES, we also gave them free time off which does not come out of their leave. We also purchased tickets for every staff member and gave them a day to come to the game, and that is not taken from their leave.

So you've done your bit.

AM: We think so and we are hoping you will think so as well. But it's not to be self serving or self flattering, but we wanted to ensure that when the last ball has been bowled, the trophies have been presented, the tears of joy and sorrow have been shed, people look on and say 'Cable & Wireless did what they were supposed to do and they made a significant contribution.'

I know that you are all cricket buffs. What do you think about the performance of the West Indies team?

AM: As a sportsman, I think that every sports team goes through a re-building stage and I think that's where we're at. We're optimistic, as a sponsor in the past of the team, that they will be restored to their rightful place on the pedestal of World Cricket and so we too are eagerly urging them on and we are patient.

AS: I am just hopeful that we can see some turn around in the team. I think when I listen to my friends around me, the wider Caribbean is disappointed in the performance.

When the current sponsorship expires, will Cable & Wireless be interested once again in being the sponsor of the team?

AM: There is a rich history and when that time comes up, there will be very intense discussions, and that will happen when that time arises and we will wait and see.