The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (‘URCA’) issues this Final Determination and Order to Cable Bahamas Limited (‘CBL’) following URCA’s investigation into the quality of service of CBL’s pay television service.

The need for an investigation arose following CBL’s price application to restructure/repackage its pay television packages. CBL submitted the applications to restructure its REVTV offers on 27 October 2020 for its residential packages and 20 January 2021 for business packages. Having determined the applications were matters of public importance, URCA published a consultation document (ECS 04/2021)1 on 19 March 2021 that set out URCA’s preliminary views and invited feedback from the public. Amongst the responses received by URCA, there were numerous complaints regarding the service quality of CBL’s pay TV service. The most recurring issues experienced by customers were service outages, error messages, pixelated channels, an incorrect TV guide, and dissatisfaction with DVR boxes.

URCA stated in its Final Determination on the repackaging that it was important to address the complaints due to their widespread nature. As a result, URCA formally notified CBL on 20 July 2021 that it was launching an investigation.