25 million dollars is the amount of money BTL says it will be investing in expansion of its system. Today Managing Director of BTL John Vondras told us that the company's focus will be in rural areas where as many as 5000 more customers will be connected to the BTL system through direct-to-home phones as well as community and pay phones.
John Vondras, Managing Director BTL
"The investment that we are putting in is geared 60% towards the rural community and 40% for the major metropolitan areas that exist where we are expanding the network. And this $25 million will be spread for brand installations providing service where none has ever existed and repairing rehabilitating the existing network that exists today in many of the areas. We are really focusing to help our rural customers get the service not only that they want but that they demand and should have."
Alfonso Noble,
How much coverage will this give to the rural communities in Belize?
"Well this is a first phase and if anything our ultimate goal for Belize is that any customer anytime can have service where they want and how they want. But that can't be accomplished overnight unfortunately and so to do that we are starting in each of the six districts we are going to be deploying the new equipment so that customers can have service that have never had it before. And also we will be expanding areas where service exists but the capacity is not sufficient to provide the needs of customers. Today we have about 31,000 PSTN customers and we are adding 5,000 so you can say we are increasing about 15% additional."
If you are wondering where the capital will come for the investment BTL is making well Vondras says that it will come directly from the company since no dividends will be declared for the current fiscal year. BTL will still pay a dividend for the last fiscal year ending March of 2004. That is expected to be paid in September and will probably be the last dividend. ICC is then expected to use its 75% holding to change the articles of association which currently force them to pay a dividend.