Chief Financial Officer at BeAliv Barry Williams told Guardian Business yesterday that in less than four months, the second mobile operator has taken approximately 28 percent of the pre-paid market, and that once mobile number portability (MNP) launches on April 25, it expects to see a boost in subscriber numbers.
Williams said in an interview that the company has done "exceedingly well", having hit over 50,000 subscribers so far.
"That is probably phenomenal. We are a bit ahead of our subscriber expectation, all things considered," he said.
Aliv's subscription base is expected to grow once MNP comes on board, but even without it being in place at the moment, Williams noted that steps are being made to convince customers to switch to Aliv without fear of losing contact with friends, family and business associates. One of those ways he suggested was by simply keeping the last four digits of their current numbers.
Williams pointed out that MNP does give a certain amount of "push on the subscribers", and it does represent a "decent size of the market".
"We expect that it will be impactful," he said.
"We estimate that when you consider the amount of subscribers in this market that will be porting their numbers, it's probably in the range of 100,000."
Williams said, in Aliv's view, the market is divided into three segments, with there being two broad perspectives on it: retail and commercial.
"The retail is anybody who is not a company; commercial is all companies and businesses," he said.
"On the retail side of the market, we have taken about 28 percent of what we perceive to be the market at the moment.
"With respect to commercial, we have launched commercial. However, we are actively selling. We are actively signing contracts. We put out an offer to the commercial market that effectively says if you sign up for our service now, notwithstanding MNP coming in on April 25, we will give you free services now until April 25."
Williams said he thinks it is a "very compelling offer".
He also pointed out that the infrastructure and platform for MNP was established between 2011 and 2012 when the fixed line market opened up.

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian