Cable Bahamas to appeal URCA fine over ‘quality of service’ investigation

By Shanieka Smith

Staff Writer

#TheBahamas, December 9, 2022 – The Cable Bahamas (CBL) was issued a fine of 2.05% of its monthly TV charges for 2021 by the Utilities Regulation and Competition Agency (URCA).  This decision was made due to an investigation into CBL due to several customer complaints about error messages, outages and pixelated channels.

The Final Determination and Order was issued to CBL on November 21, giving them 30 days to pay the fine.  CBL, however, said they plan to make an appeal against the decision.

“With consideration, URCA ordered the licensee to resolve the error messages and pixelation related to its pay TV services within a three-month period while, at the same time, providing regular communication to its customers and the Regulator.  CBL must also complete its set-top box replacement programme as soon as practicably possible,” the communication’s regulator said.

CBL argued that they were not informed by URCA about the account or phone numbers of customers that made the complaints or the date and time of incidents.  They said $45.1 million was invested into network upgrades during the pandemic and plan to invest $85 million into a Fibre to the Home (FTH) infrastructure for better customer experience.

URCA maintained their decision saying the fine resulted from CBL’s failure to resolve the issue in a suitable time period. bCBL said this large fine will be detrimental to the company and hinder its efforts to upgrade its network via FTH.