Oranjestad, St. Eustatius- Eutel recently announced the introduction of their IPTV service, called EU-TV. The service offers customers, for the first time in years, the possibility to have cable TV back in their homes and -surprisingly enough- even on their mobile phones.

The introduction of the new service was a good moment for the BES-Reporter to have an in-depth interview with Eutel’s Managing Director, Maryteresse (Liesje) Lijfrock – Redan.

“The new service has really been well received”, according to Lijfrock-Redan. “In just 4 days, over customer 80 customers have already signed up for the new service which offers 100 cable TV channels”.

One of the big advantages of the new system, according to Lijfrock-Redan, is the fact that customers can set-up the service themselves, after having picked up the EU-TV box at Eutel’s office. “However, should a customer experience any type of issue, we will dispatch a technician to help out”. Lijfrock-Redan said that so far ‘very few people’ had experienced issues, but that especially older customers sometimes needed a helping hand.

According to Eutel’s CEO, Eutel for some time had been studying the possibility of introducing an IPTV service (TV through the Internet) on the island.

“Since there no longer was any cable service, many people tried to use different devices or services to stream TV through the internet, with mixed results. People often blamed the quality of our internet service, but forgot that issues could also be caused by the provider of the device or the service in question”.

The system introduced by Eutel, was done a cooperation with Trinidadian provider. Eutel has signed a so-called ‘Service Level Agreement’ (SLA) with the company in question, so that support is guaranteed when needed.

Multiple connections

The new service offers customers the option of having multiple boxes set up in one home. “There is an initial fee of 60 dollars for the first box and a fee of $50 for additional boxes. The is also an additional monthly charge of just 10 dollars for each additional box”, according to Lijfrock-Redan.

The fact that the acquired system is quite modern can be seen back in the fact that subscribers can even establish the service on their Android phones. “Subscribers get a user number and a PIN-code, so that -if so desired- they can watch TV on their mobile devices too. Even when people go on vacation it is possible to log in from abroad and continue to watch your favorite channels”, according to the Eutel director.

With the introduction of IPTV, Eutel can offer even more interesting bundled service packages, combining the IPTV service with internet an phone line service. The packages range from Bronze (starting at $135 per month) all the way up to a Diamond (345 per month).