Telecom operator, Claro Caribbean earned US$173 million in profit for its September third quarter prior to interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation charges (EBITDA), which was 13.8 per cent less than last year's quarter.

The decline was "mostly as a result of new taxes in Puerto Rico", said the company in its financials released last week.

Claro Caribbean includes operations in Dominica Republic, Puerto Rico and Jamaica, and is a subsidiary of Mexico-based America Movil group.

Claro Jamaica trails the local market in terms of subscribers with Digicel and Lime as major players, but the financials were not desegregated for individual Caribbean countries.

The Caribbean division, however, rapidly grew its wireless subscriber base by 36.7 per cent to 5.81 million whilst its fixed subscriber base declined from 1.6 million to 1.54 million.

The company added that its operations in the Caribbean Islands added "more than one million wireless subscribers in the first nine months of the year which was 33 per cent more than in the same period of 2008". It added that 185,000 clients were obtained in the last quarter alone...
Read full Article