Aliv CEO Damian Blackburn lied about he numbers of mobile subscribers and cannot truly say how many mobile subscribers there are in the Bahamas! Well, we ga help him!
Nassau, Bahamas – Aliv is in trouble and these days the company CEO Damian Blackburn appears to be a stranger to the truth and has vanished.
The second mobile provider, which came onboard late in November, is already looking for new capital so early in the game. They said they need some $30 million more in funds for the operation. But then they came back again, a few days later, to say that the company needed $50 million and was seeking this capital through a bond offering. We at Bahamas Press believe Aliv needs even more than that, and maybe, whenever they are able to speak truth about their product, then Bahamians with capital might consider.
The fact is Aliv needs money. The cheap phones and constant system failures are not working for the consumers. Three months in, it is facing a cash issue and the Bahamas Public money through VAT cannot assist.
Let’s break it down. By the end of February, Aliv CEO Damian Blackburn at the Business Solution Services launch said that at end-February 2017, Aliv had managed to capture 45,000 subscribers – equivalent to 25 per cent of the mobile market – within its first 12 weeks. Is this true? NO! It was a lie and they knew it was not true.
And here’s how we know; according to URCA’s Annual Report for 2015, mobile voice penetration stood at 311,175 or, in simple terms, there were three hundred and eleven thousand one hundred and seventy-five mobile customers in the Bahamas. At the time, BTC was the only mobile provider. It is now February 2017, and surely the number of customers would not have declined to 180,000 without the knowledge of URCA eh? You must wonder why URCA would not come out and bring clarity to the country, and potential investors about ‘da LIE’ ALIV is selling. Maybe it would be to the advantage of the press to seek the truth on this and show Damian Blackburn that we in the Bahamas know math! But they are pitiful when it comes to digging into research.
According to Blackburn’s numbers, the truth would mean – using the numbers in the URCA 2015 Annual Report – that Aliv has less than 14.5% of the market with most of its customers still clinging tightly onto their BTC mobile phones. So why would Aliv continue da LIE?
Today in the newspapers we see a second executive of Aliv, Barry Williams, coming out saying Aliv holds 28% of the mobile prepaid market, not paying any attention to the lie presented by his CEO Blackburn days earlier.
Our point is simple here: Why should I give you my $50,000 to invest into a company which does not know the numbers in the mobile market, and secondly, cannot be honest about the true state of the mobile market in which you are competing?
And when will Damian Blackburn tell the public he told an boldfaced lie when he announced his company captured 25% of the market? We understand he has since traveled deep into Haiti where his Digicel Operators operate best.
We report yinner decide!
