Seamus Lynch, chief operating officer, Digicel Jamaica.McPherse Thompson, Staff Reporter
Competition in the cellular telephone market in Jamaica will officially come on stream in just over a week's time with the launch of Digicel Jamaica's global mobile network package, but the company is not saying just yet what products and services it will be offering consumers.
In fact, Digicel has for some time now been carrying out test runs on its network to ensure a smooth inauguration, and in the past days has been seeking to build its customer base using a marketing strategy which takes its telecommunications team to workers in some of the island's major corporate offices.
However, Digicel's marketing manager, Harry Smith, said the company would not be releasing to the wider public the extent of its products and services until a few days before the official launch because they did not want to give their rivals the competitive edge.
"We don't want to tell our competitors what we will have because they could react before our launch," said Mr. Smith.
Digicel will be banking on, among other things, the quality and extent of its service, including its island-wide and, in some cases, international reach, as well as what it said is a competitive basket of telecommunications rates to attract customers.
When the service is launched, it will be the first time in the more than 100-year-old existence of the island's telephone system that there will be direct competition to the incumbent voice carrier - the hitherto monopoly telecommunications carrier Cable & Wireless Jamaica (C&WJ), which operated before as Telecommunic-ations of Jamaica (ToJ), and as the Jamaica Telephone Company (JTC) before the Government divested the utility in the 1980s.
Digicel, formerly Mossel Jamaica, is entering the telecommunications market following a successful bid in January 2000 for one of two cellular licences auctioned by the Jamaican Government through its Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Technology.
Executives of Digicel are expected to host a pre-launch press briefing within days at which they will outline the features of the new system, prices set for their products and services, accessibility of the system within and outside of Jamaica, and the availability of value-added services which until now have not been introduced in the island.
"We do want to be innovative," Digicel's Mr. Smith said when he spoke with Sunday Business last week.
The other mobile telephone player, Centennial Digital Jamaica, which, in December 1999, won the first bid for a cellular licence to enter the Jamaican market, has not yet indicated how soon it would be launching, and spokespersons for the company were unavailable for comment on Friday. As to Centennial's proposed pricing policy, however, a company spokesman said in February, this year, that their prices would be competitive.
The Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), in a document on interconnect charges and fixed-to-mobile retail prices released to market players in February, said the minimum retail rates that can be charged by other mobile players are the current retail rates for calls from the fixed network of C&WJ's network.
The OUR said those rates will remain in force until the end of August 2000 when the utility regulator is asked to consider an adjustment to the overall tariffs.
It means that neither Digicel nor Centennial Digital can charge customers below those prices currently being charged by C&WJ, which now charge between $3 and $5 per minute for telephone calls made to or from fixed lines to cellular telephones, depending on the time of day or the day on which those calls are made, with the pre-paid cellular instrument attracting a fixed charge of $4 per minute.
Notwithstanding that stipulation, the OUR has given both Digicel and Centennial Digital the option of charging up to a maximum of $11.80 per minute for fixed lines to mobile calls made within one of the four regions in which the island is divided, and a maximum of $12.08 per minute for calls made nationally.
