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Digicel unleashes 4G Mobile

Published:Wednesday | June 27, 2012 | 12:00 AM
Digicel models pose for the audience during the telecommunications firm's Monday night launch of its new 4G Mobile service, held at Victoria Pier in downtown Kingston. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer

With the launch of its 4G Mobile network, Digicel has introduced a number of data plans for individual and corporate customers.

Starting from $1,500 per month for post-paid and $100 a day for prepaid customers, the company outlined the new 4G data bundle plans in a release late yesterday.

Jacqueline Burrell-Clarke, Digicel's public relations manager noted that, for BlackBerry users, the new 4G data bundle plan was an alternate rate.

"The 2G rates that would have been in the market before, those remain. There is no change in those prices. However, let's say you have a BlackBerry and you want to start browsing 4G... that's the rate you will start paying. So at no time will you be paying for two different plans. It's either you're paying for the 2G or you're paying for the 4G plan," she said.

4G services limited

While 2G plans are unlimited in terms of data, the new 4G services are limited to plans between 500 MB and 7 GB of data. For example, a prepaid 30-day 3 GB plan will cost $2,750 per month plus general consumption tax (GCT). A similar 30-day prepaid package using 2G costs $1,599 plus GCT.

However, Burrell-Clarke noted that the 2G plans do not allow users to stream videos, a major drawing card of the new 4G network.

Burrell-Clarke said Digicel would be uploading a bandwidth calculator on its website for customers to determine which plan would be most useful for them.

"It allows you to go in and you input information according to your usage pattern. It tells you what your recommended plan would be so you can see exactly how you will be able to stream or browse with a 1 GB as opposed to, let's say, a 7 GB."

According to website http://cow.neondragon.net, 500 MB, (which is the lowest plan offered by Digicel), gets you 5,000 basic web pages (mainly text) or 1,500 rich web pages (pages with multimedia). A 1 GB plan (the second smallest plan) would get you 10,000 and 3,000 pages respectively. You can send 500,000 basic emails on a 500 MB plan and one million on a 1 GB plan.

See related story on Pages C1 and D1.