Stephen Twomey, senior vice-president in charge of Mobile at Cable & Wireless Jamaica, announces the introduction of a new prepaid cellular calling card at a press briefing at the Courtleigh Hotel, New Kingston yesterday. - Dennis Coke CABLE & WIRELESS Jamaica has cut its per minute cellular call rate by just under 28 per cent, as part of its effort to retain customers and attract new users in the face of upcoming competition in the mobile telephone market.
The move comes as Cable & Wireless introduces a new prepaid calling card service, exclusively for its 120,000 or so prepaid telephone customers, starting on Monday, October 2.
Senior vice-president in charge of Mobile at Cable & Wireless, Stephen Twomey, said "Classic Cellie", the product name given to the calling card, will be billed at $13 per minute compared with the current rate of $18 per minute.
Speaking at a press briefing at the Courtleigh Hotel, New Kingston yesterday, Mr. Twomey, pointing out that "Classic Cellie" would be easier to use than the World-Talk prepaid calling card, said customers would no longer be required to enter their card's account number each time they make a call. "Once the card's account number has been entered it never has to be entered again," he said.
Having entered the account number, Mr. Twomey explained, "Classic Cellie" customers would only be required to dial the digit one, plus the seven digits of a telephone number when calling a regular telephone, and just the seven digits when calling cellular numbers.
When the new system becomes fully operational, prepaid cellular customers will no longer be able to use the World-Talk card. However, the company said that at the introduction of the new card, either card can be used for a 60-day period.
Classic cards will be available in values of $30, $50, $100, $200, $500 and $1,000 with expiration periods ranging between 60 and 180 days, depending on the value. Customers will be able to add value to their existing accounts by buying new Classic cards, which will be available from authorised cellular dealers, calling card distributors, and the company's business offices and mobile customer care centres islandwide.
The introduction of the new card is part of Cable & Wireless' $1.4 billion development programme to improve its mobile services.
However, Mr. Twomey admitted that the new thrust was part of the company's response to retain customers as two new mobile players get ready to compete against Cable & Wireless, up to now a monopoly supplier of telephone services.
"We are going to have two new competitors and we are trying to anticipate what they are going to do, and so this is part of the effort to retain customers," said the senior vice-president.
At separate auctions in December 1999 and January this year, Ireland-based telecommunications company Mossel, and the Bahamian-based Cellular One Caribbean, agreed to pay the Jamaican Government US$47.5 million and US$45 million respectively for licences to compete in the local market. Both companies are expected to start offering telephone service in Jamaica within the first quarter of 2001.
Mr. Twomey said that although prepaid service was one of the fastest growing areas in the telecommunications market both in Jamaica and elsewhere, the cellular prepaid service was priced higher than other cellular services because the volume of calls was higher among post-paid customers. Cable & Wireless currently has just over 54,000 post-paid cellular telephone customers.
