(Article below published in the Today Newspaper on Friday, June 13th, 2008)

GREAT BAY, June 13th, 2008 - UTS has bought Caribserve in a deal described as a 100% acquisition of the company.

The deal was announced by Glen Carty, COO of UTS Eastern Caribbean at a press conference held at its Training and Development Centre in Philipsburg yesterday afternoon.

Carty told Today in a private interview “We have had to be very circumspect in our dealings on the matter and we have not advertised the negotiations that have been taking place for many months to lead us to this position today.”

Carty went on to tell assembled press “Chippie is leading the market as a mobile telephone provider; however we do offer other services. One of those services has been internet provision. It takes big company courage to look at something it is providing and say it is not happy with it. The service needed to be improved and to do that would be a big investment. Instead we have done our homework and after a survey we established that without doubt Caribserve is the best internet service on the island. Because of that we instigated some negotiations and an offer was made. That offer has been accepted.” Carty refused to answer the question as to what the deal had cost other than to say “We have used some of our profits to make this investment as we told you we would. This is an investment in the future and will be fantastic for our customers.”

He then turned to the subject of who would manage the Caribserve Company. “One of the important things that I would point out about Caribserve is that it was started by a local man, a St Maartener. Roy Richardson is the technical brains behind the success of the Caribserve. His partner, Olivier Bechu is the business and financial brain. Together they have made Caribserve what it is today. I think that without those two people providing the continuity of quality we would not consider ourselves to have made a good investment. They will carry on looking after the quality of the business as a subsidiary of UTS.”

Roy Richardson told press, “This is a win win situation for our customers. The pooling of our resources means that they will receive package deals that incorporate the best of what UTS has to offer with what Caribserve offers. This is a marriage of the best of both worlds."

Lyrio Gomes, UTS director of business, said “With the new technologies that UTS is investing in, such as UMTS and the laying of fiber optic cables we feel sure that Caribserve will benefit immensely from the ability to further the excellent service it already provides.”

The question as to whether this would therefore cost existing UTS customers money to transfer to Caribserve was raised. Carty said “No it will not cost our existing UTS internet customers one penny to be transferred over to Caribserve provision. In addition they will be able to retain their existing e mail addresses.”

Carty also addressed the fact that now not only did UTS and Chippie operate on both the French and Dutch side of the island it’s internet service would also be able to do so as Caribserve had been doing so for some time.

In an exclusive preview of the information to be sent to existing  Caribserve customers Richardson and Bechu  write “Riding on the success of the Chippie trademark and with a desire to explore the full potential of the internet as a delivery vehicle for future technologies, services and packaged offerings that could be enjoyed by its customers, UTS, the international communications company of the Netherlands Antilles, invited Caribserve.net for exploratory discussions on a possible strategic partnership.

As a result of the great synergy and shared vision that existed between the two companies, UTS presented an offer to Caribserve.NET's shareholders, which was accepted and led this morning to the natural marriage of the two telecommunication leaders.”

The letter goes on to explain that the management of Caribserve would be unchanged and that it would continue to give excellent standards of service.

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