The Jamaican government’s August 31 decision to approve the acquisition of mobile operator Claro by competitor Digicel has fired up concerns about the impact for the consumer on a market that will be reduced to two players and see the dominant Digicel strengthened even more. However, the government has promised a regulatory overhaul in an attempt to keep Digicel in check, which could provide some breathing space to LIME.

The government said Digicel would have to run the two networks separately, which for the moment rules out the operator’s hopes of extracting all the synergies from merging them. Digicel will also have to fulfill all of the obligations under the Claro licenses, meaning it must complete the build-out to 90% population coverage.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding announced a 12-point set of amendments to the current regulatory situation which could be fast-tracked in six weeks- a timeframe that looks unlikely.

The two most important elements of these amendments concern powers to control interconnection rates and uncompetitive practices - providing some protection for smaller players.

As part of negotiations with the government Digicel agreed to reduce per-minute calling rates across networks meaning it will cost 16% less to call LIME phones from a Digicel phone during peak hours - down from J$17.70 to J$14.70.

At the end of 2010 Digicel had an estimated 73% market share in Jamaica, followed by LIME with 20% and Claro 7%.

Digicel has maintained it believes Jamaica is a sufficiently competitive market and that merging with Claro will not actually give it an 80% marketshare as most of Claro’s subscribers are already also Digicel subscribers.

Essentially the proposed merger exposed holes in Jamaica’s regulatory framework. There are fears the merger has been approved before an appropriate regulatory framework is in place.

It remains to be seen how quickly the oft talked about plans to split off telecommunications from the OUR to form a separate telecoms regulator will happen

And number portability, while it is one of the issues being studied as part of the government’s 2011-2014 IT budget plan is still a long way off if or when the government decides to go ahead with it.

The América Móvil-Digicel transaction in Jamaica also hinges on regulatory approval being granted in El Salvador and Honduras for Digicel to sell its units.

Some analysts have welcomed the government’s decision and say it could potentially favor LIME. That remains to be seen.

In other news, LIME launched a low-cost laptop promotion in Jamaica and St Lucia to promote broadband access.

LIME will offer the FLIPTop laptop, an ultra-thin, WiFi-enabled device that has a 160GB hard drive, 1GB of ram, a 1.3-megapixel camera. The laptop comes with the Windows 7 operating system.

In Jamaica, the laptop will cost J$14,000 (US$163) coupled with a two-year broadband contract with LIME. In St Lucia the laptop is available for EC$499 (US$184) with free installation, a modem and 50% off the cost of a broadband package for the first three months.

US online streaming video provider Netflix launched services across Latin America and the Caribbean in the first half of September a service that has the potential to revolutionize the way the public consume video content.

The launch produced considerable excitement from the regional media and raised questions as to whether the new service would lead the company into direct competition with cable providers and also whether it would be able to compete with the high levels of piracy.

However, Netflix founder and CEO was emphatic that the service which provides unlimited downloads from Netflix’s extensive library for a monthly fee of US$7.99 was cheap enough to compete and that people would opt for quality and ease of use.

The cable providers on the other hand would probably end up working with Netflix as the service would drive broadband adoption. Limited broadband connectivity will be Netflix’s biggest obstacle as will the penetration of credit cards – currently the only means of payment – meaning for the moment its appeal will be restricted to those with broadband.

The Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) will make its Caribbean Spectrum Management Task Force a permanent body that seeks to provide guidelines for modernizing antiquated spectrum management practices in the region, CTU secretary general Bernadette Lewis said.



The task force was formed as part of a project that CTU began with the Canadian International Development Agency and is addressing: harmonization of spectrum policies, developing consensus approaches to spectrum allocation, the digital dividend and cross-border interference.

The Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network (CKLN) commissioned a number of pilot projects that will use the broadband fibre optic network C@ribNET, to be developed with telco LIME.



In July, CKLN - an inter-governmental agency of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) - signed a US$6.3mn contract with LIME to develop the dedicated knowledge, learning and research network C@ribNET.

The network is expected to connect tertiary institutions, hospitals, schools, government agencies and Caricom institutions. All of these will be linked to their counterparts in Europe, the US, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Natcom, a joint venture between Vietnamese mobile operator Viettel and Haitian state telco Teleco, launched commercial operations in Haiti.

In the last 12 months, the JV has deployed nearly 1,000 base transceiver stations and some 3,000km of optic cable, becoming the first telco in Haiti to supply both 2G and 3G services.

Natcom is also the only mobile service operator in Haiti that owns an international internet gateway, connecting the country to the rest of the world via the Bahamas and the US.

Since its trial run in July, Natcom has attracted 140,000 mobile subscribers and thousands of 3G internet subscribers, Natcom deputy director Tran Sy Tien said. The company expects those figures to reach 500,000 and 20,000, respectively, by the end of this year.