Carlene Chin Sang protest outside Claro's head office in New Kingston, November 27. - Norman Grindley/Acting Photography Editor

Claro Jamaica has set back its timetable for completing its network of 610 cell towers, from December to the fist quarter of 2009, but says disgruntled subcontractors were not the cause of the delay.

"We have 70 per cent coverage by population now," said commercial director Noel Esty, but he did not say how many sites this represented.

For much of last week, protestors gathered in front of Claro's New Kingston headquarters to complain of non-payment for cell towers erected.

Cell tower project to Hauwei

Claro has contracted the cell tower project to Hauwei Tech-nologies, a Chinese firm, which in turn has parcelled the job out to subcontractors.

"They demonstrated at Claro although Claro did not owe them," said Esty. "This is certainly not an issue for us. It is between our contractor and the people they subcontracted and as far as we know, negotiations are in progress between them."

The delay, however, has not stopped the roll out of the iPhone 3G plan, which Claro - formerly MiPhone - has exclusive rights from Apple Inc to sell in Jamaica.

The company has towers in all 14 parishes, Esty said.

The build out of its 3G network, which included expansion of its towers from 475 to 610, rebranding of the company and its products, marketing and promotion, is costing the company some US$250 million.

Advertisements for the iPhone are now running, and Esty says the response has been positive, though he shied away from commenting on sales figures, saying it was too early.

Claro is a distant third among the big three mobile phone providers in Jamaica with around 250,000 customers. LIME Jamaica has 660,000 and Digicel 1.9 million.

dionne.rose@gleanerjm.com