CONSUMERS in Jamaica's cellular phone market will have several assurances to hold Mossel Jamaica to when the new player enters the local market next year.
In order to lure customers away from current monopoly provider Cable and Wireless, the fledgling company is banking on being able to offer a wider range of services to consumers. Those consumers are already being bombarded by a heavy Cable and Wireless marketing campaign, so some observers say Mossel will not only have to lure consumers, but deliver whatever it promises in order to keep them.
"We intend to be known as the company that brought choice to Jamaican telecommunications" brags Mossel's marketing director, Harry Smith. In an interview with The Gleaner, the former beer baron admitted that Cable and Wireless had already drawn first blood by drastically lowering the margins in the cellular market with its give-aways and lowered instrument prices.
He expressed confidence however, that when the turf war between both operators begins in earnest, Mossel could shift the "terms of engagement" from price to service.
The "new and improved" services Mossel claims it can deliver include:
Global international roaming.
Availability of phones configured to double as personal digital assistants (PDA's).
E-mail and fax retrieval in addition to text messaging.
Phones equipped with "smart cards" to minimise cloning.
Ability of phones to interact with personal computers.
voice activated dialling.
Competitive prices on phones and accessories.
Less congestion in heavily populated areas via higher concentration of transmitters in those areas.
Ability to make/receive calls in many areas where service is currently unavailable via more strategically placed transmitters islandwide.
Mossel-trained network of phone/accessory dealers islandwide.
Customer friendly bill-payment system.
Wide range of phone brands/types available from all Mossel dealers.
Chief Operations Officer Seamus Lynch added that the company intended to compete on the basis of price as well. He notes that the international connections of Mossel place the company in a position to negotiate favourable terms for instruments and accessories it can then pass on to consumers.
Much of the service quality will depend on the Erickson infrastructure that will form the brain of the company's operations, as well as the GSM transmission technology which the company claims is superior to the TDMA system being used by Cable and Wireless.
Some local telecommunications sources, however, dismiss talk of GSM being superior, charging that there is not much difference between GSM, TDMA, or the CDMA system to be used by the other cellular company entering the market soon, Cellular One.
These sources charge that Mossel's success will depend largely on whether the company is "treated fairly" by Cable and Wireless, and allowed to interact with the Cable and Wireless Network. A critical factor might also be how well the Government and the Office of Utilities Regulation offer any support that may be needed.
"It makes no sense to have the greatest cellular network in the world installed here, and then Cable and Wireless makes it difficult for you to dial into their network to call someone on a land phone," one source charged.
