Archived News

He's Back! Steve Twomey

Dated: 1 March 2003

Let’s say he suddenly finds himself marooned on a desert island. Which one communications gadget would you think international telecommunications expert, Steve Twomey, would most want to have with him as he awaits rescue? A laptop?

Yes, you are so correct! “A laptop, with a pretty good stock of computer action games, would keep me very busy, and in good shape until they come and get me,” admits Mr. Twomey, President and CEO of Reliant Enterprise Communications Limited, a recently launched Kingston-based telecommunications organisation that will see the investment of J$200 million in the industry over the next two years. But concerning the evolution of telecommunications technology over the next 20 years, Mr. Twomey thinks that you will see some amazing things happening.

“Within the next three to five years,” he predicts, “you could put your food in the oven, leave in the morning, and at 3 o’clock you use your cellular phone to make an encrypted call into the network that will turn on the oven and cook the meal by the time you get there. Besides and except for what we call backbone networks, which are large networks that connect over great distances, I believe the world will go completely wireless in the next 20 years.” Steve, a focused and outgoing sort of man, is an international telecommunications expert with 33 years of experience in the USA, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean.

Reliant Enterprise Communications, a joint venture between himself and local ISP trailblazer Patrick Terrelonge, CEO of InfoChannel Limited, will offer high quality voice services delivered on a dedicated network to assure call clarity and ease of use. Not only will the new company offer data services via domestic/international circuits ranging from 56kb to 1.5mbs, it will provide 24 hours per day continuous service, in keeping with its commitment to quality, reliability and service that customers require and deserve. Mr. Twomey, 54, was born and raised in the Massachusetts area of the USA, graduating in the 1970s from college with a Political Science major.

So, the question is: How does a Political Science major end up becoming an international telecommunications expert with a passion for Jamaica? With his future undecided, back in the 1960s, Mr. Twomey said he took a test to join the New England telephone company, and another to become a Massachusetts State Trooper. The telephone company called first, and without hesitation, his fate as a telecommunications expert germinated. “Besides hard work and persistency, in a lot of what you do, or what happens to you,” he rationalised, “there is some element of luck.” Looking back over the many years he has been in the telecommunications industry, Mr. Twomey considers the time he joined the New England telephone company as the right time. In fact, it was indeed “deregulation” pains for the Bell System and Steve Twomey was right there both witnessing and experiencing it all.

Prior to his New England telephone company job, the young Twomey wasn’t your average Massachusetts boy. Even though his dad was a successful entrepreneur with his own funeral parlour business, that didn’t help cushion the 17-year-old from the impact of a head-on collision into fatherhood, marriage and working odd jobs to support a young wife and child. What he considers the “hardest, most painful thing” that ever happened to him occurred when his high school sweetheart telephoned him to say she was four months pregnant. He was in his senior year at a private Catholic high school for boys. “When you get a phone call at that age … which was a whole lot different from today… from your girlfriend telling you that she is pregnant, that kind of upsets your equilibrium pretty good,” he says.

“Believe it or not,” he recalls, “that one phone call completely changed the design of my life. In fact, it was the most difficult time in my life, and if it wasn’t for my family who stood with me every step of the way, I don’t know how things would have turned out.” The situation got even more compounded in that in his final year at college, he was already the father of three children. To make ends meet, he had to work six nights per week, and at different stages worked as a bartender, garbage collector, log cabin builder, hot water maker, and milk deliveryman. Even though he considers that period a setback in his early life, Mr. Twomey didn’t let it prevent him from completing his political science degree, even when it seemed beyond his grasp. “The important thing was that I believed in me and didn’t give up,” said Mr. Twomey, who considered his dad his role model.

He was “a very kind man who knew no prejudices, and someone who was always extending a helping hand to people in any way he could.” He said that his father had a kindness and a gentleness about him that has helped shaped his life personally and professionally. Thirty-three years later , Steve Twomey is armed with a wealth of domestic and international experience in all aspects of the telecommunications business, including Wireline, Wireless Broadband, CATV and Data. Up until August 2001, he was the Senior Vice President for Mobile Service for Cable & Wireless Jamaica, where he grew the business by 300 per cent, and increased the value of the asset by 500 per cent. In fiscal year 2001/2002, the mobile division was said to have exceeded its revenue commitment. As a well-known person in business, government, media and local communities in Jamaica, Mr. Twomey has experience in three telecommunications start-up ventures for NYNEX and McCourt Cable Systems.

He has also developed a joint venture in Europe with Daimler Benz for a Pan European network and he has experience in joint ventures, acquisitions and new business opportunities in both domestic and internal markets. In spite of this vast experience in and knowledge of the telecommunications industry, Mr. Twomey said he would like to be known as one of it key facilitators, who through Reliant Enterprises Communications, satisfies the customers’ needs and wants in an economical fashion, plus making them, through the communications process, more competitive on the world stage. “That’s what I’d really like to be able to achieve,” said Mr.

Twomey, a man who declares his undying love for Jamaica. Right now, one of the things that dissatisfies him is the level of service other telecommunications industry players are providing their customers. “Reliant will be different.” he says. “It will have its own network, its focus will be on the needs of the customer, and most of all, will offer quality and reliability.” Concerning customer service, the former Chicago Bulls draftee promised to make his private home phone number publicly available, should a customer have a problem or concern, they would be able to reach him anytime, even if it’s 3:00 o’clock in the morning.

One of the obstacles he has had to overcome in establishing Reliant Enterprises Communications, he revealed, was in finding a partner who shares his vision and who would invest some capital into the business. “Meeting with Patrick Terrelonge was indeed fortuitous, as he not only shares my vision, but wants to act on it, and was willing to become a partner,” says Mr. Twomey, who recalled his years with the former telecommunications monopoly, Cable & Wireless as “sweet-bitter”.

Whether he was fired or resigned from his job at Cable & Wireless, is neither here nor there. But to the man who claimed he had resigned twice from that company, the events which unfolded made him both “angry and bitter.” Nevertheless, the “lessons that that experience taught me was that no matter how good you think or know you are at something, or the reality of how good a job you are doing, you are not indispensable. Neither should you underestimate the politics inside a company, and how it can ultimately impact you,” he says, hinting that both personal agendas of CEO and upper management have literally destroyed companies. Despite that “sweet-bitter” experience, Mr. Twomey expressed an undying love for Jamaica.

“I think it (Jamaica) is an extraordinary country with extraordinary people. It has an extraordinary beauty of its own that you can’t find anywhere else in this world, and if I didn’t love this place then I wouldn’t have come back, much less do business here.” As a man who wants to spend the rest of his life in Jamaica, Mr. Twomey not only loves the climate and our world renowned coffee, but his favourite Jamaican food jerk pork and festivals. “I’ll go out two or three times a week to some hot food spot, get myself six or so festivals and just eat them all,” he says, adding that he also loves warm tropical weather, the beaches, and the greenery in such places as Fern Gully and the Blue Mountains.

His idea of relaxation is curling up with a Stephen King or James Patterson novel. “I read a lot of business and technical stuff during the week, but then off the job, I just like a good book of fiction — be it detective or horror.” Other times you will find him playing a round of golf, or at the beach or poolside at his favourite northcoast hangouts. As the father of four children, three older ones and a 16-year-old daughter, plus grand children, Mr. Twomey is very passionate about children. As part of its corporate responsibility, one way he sees his company giving back to Jamaica would be by helping the less fortunate children.

“We hope to give the tools so that when they grow up and want to start their own businesses, they would have already possessed the skill needed to compete with anybody in the world.” And finally, his advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is that they should first think through what they really want to do, and secondly, don’t be locked into a state of mind that says this is what I am going to do and I cannot change.’ “Remain focused, believe in what you do and never give up,” he challenged.