Another telecom vying to enter market
Published:Sunday | February 13, 2022 | 12:06 AM
Broadband By Home Town Limited to set up wireless Internet across underserved areas, but it needs a licence first.
The company wants to offer Internet to persons by way of Wi-Fi and broadband connectivity, the Financial Gleaner understands, and plans to target its services at Kingston and St Andrew, as well as the centre of the island.
The company was set up last October with one shareholder, Anthony Petrone, a businessman based in the United States, who has built similar networks in Florida over the last 20 years. Petrone said he would reserve comment about his plans for Jamaica until the regulator, the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) has reviewed his company’s application.
Broadband by Home Town Limited has applied for a service provider and a carrier licence, according to notices published by the OUR. The regulator is at the stage in the process where it requests objections to the granting of the licence from members of the public, which is standard procedure.
Around 40 per cent of Jamaicans are said to be without access to high-speed Internet, according to the most recent market entrant, Rock Connect ,which is about to build out fast Internet service for specific rural communities.
Officially, the proportion of the population without Internet stands at 28 per cent, but it varies depending on whether one includes or excludes Internet on mobile devices, according to sector data from the OUR.
Of the 72 per cent with access, four of every five persons accessing the Internet, 0r 1.78 million subscribers, are doing so on cellphones while 395,000 persons access on faster and more stable connections such as broadband and Wi-Fi.
Currently, there are 113 holders of telecoms licences, of which 24 are carriers and five are service providers. The market is dominated by Digicel Jamaica and FLOW Jamaica.
For the second quarter of 2021, April to June, the telecommunications sector generated $26.1 billion in revenue, according to the latest Telecom Market Information Report published by the OUR.