On Friday, the push to have BTL acquire Speednet was put on pause by the Prime Minister who said that a new public consultation campaign will now follow.
The first getting that consultation are the PUP caucuses. So far the Northern, Eastern and Western caucuses have gotten presentations from BTL on the merits of the acquisition.
One of biggest takeaways is that Speednet SMART has gross annual earnings of 40 million dollars - which would then flow directly to BTL in an acquisition - which is pitched as an ample revenue stream to cover the financing for the acquisition while handsomely growing the profits.
Sounds almost too good to be true. And maybe it is. Industry insiders have suggested to us that those gross annual earnings being touted by the PUP sound on the high side. And we certainly did not hear them from Speednet or see them printed in audited financials. We heard them for the PUP - not the most objective source.
So, how accurate really are those figures? Jules Vasquez went looking for answers:
Throughout all the talk of acquisition, Speednet/SMART has never discussed its gross earnings or its profitability.
And at his one hour press conference on January 9th - BTL's chairman did not do so.
But, the PUP Northern Caucus, in its February first release suggested that the company's annual earnings are 40 million dollars and that they would go straight to BTL - if acquired.
It says, "The financial analysis presented to the Caucus indicated that revenues are projected to increase from approximately $167 million to $207 million following the consolidation."
And on Friday, a senior member of the PUP Western Caucus and much followed Facebook poster said he had gotten a presentation on the Speednet acquisition where he learned, quote,
"Speednet generates about 40 million in cash every year. This will be taken over immediately by BTL….over 30 million will be profit…"
So, those are the numbers being put out to, or by the PUP caucuses - but a former BTL senior manager who resigned in September of last year says the figures she knows are very different:
January 26, 2026
Emily Turner, Former Acting General Manager (BTL) - Product & Solutions Development
"There's not a lot of public information about SMART because it's privately owned, but when they have to do some of their things that they have to put out because they are a public, they're a global company, or they need to register themselves, they're making between 11 and 15 million dollars a year in revenue. What are we buying this thing for? 80 million dollars for?"
7news has since obtained documentation which supports Turner's findings.
These are the annual license fees Speednet paid to the PUC from 2016 to 2019. They are calculated as 1.5% of gross revenue.
- 216,815 in 2016 - is 1.5% of gross revenues of 14.4 million,
- 204,980 in 2017 is 1.5% of 13.6 million gross,
- 232,824 in 2018 is 1.5% of 15.5 million gross,
- 202,888 is 1.5% of 13.5 million in 2019 gross.
That's a trend of 11 - 15 million dollars annual gross revenue up to 6 years ago - so how does it get to a solid 40 million dollars 6 years later? Is it that the revenues have increased by three hundred percent in the past few years, or was the company under-declaring to the regulator, or is the 40 million being bandied about by the PUP just an imaginary figure?
We did ask the PUC for the official figures for Speednet's annual license fee payments. We were told by the Communications Manager that the chairman is on leave and that a statement would be provided.
