By the Caribbean Journal staff

Regional Caribbean telecom giant Cable and Wireless has agreed to purchase Barbados-based Columbus International, another major telecom provider in the wider Latin American and Caribbean region.

London-listed Cable & Wireless, which does the majority of its business in the Caribbean, paid $1.85 billion for Columbus, which provides telecommunications and technology services in the Caribbean, Central America and the Andean region.

In a statement, the company said the move would “significantly enhance CWC’s growth profile and accelerate the progress towards each of its strategic goals.”

Cable and Wireless Communications, or CWC, says it earns $1.69 billion in revenue, operating in 17 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean and the Seychelles. Its integrated business is done under the name LIME in the Caribbean.

It serves 5.7 million residential customers, while Columbus currently serves 700,000 residential customers.

CWC said the acquisition would create an “Enlarged Group,” one “with greater regional presence, scale and scope with assets and capabilities that the Board believes will reinforce and accelerate the realization across each of CWC’s four areas of strategic focus, as set out earlier this year.”

Those areas include mobile leadership, fixed-mobile convergence, TV offerings and B2B/B2G offerings.