Digicel’s launch of a WiMax platform in Jamaica geared toward the residential segment grabbed the headlines in August. The company has offered WiMax to Jamaica’s business sector for several years and has a residential WiMax offering in the Cayman Islands and clearly sees potential to meet unmet demand for broadband on the island.

Digicel said it would guarantee 6-10 Mbps - 10 times faster than what the competition - LIME and Claro – is offering with 3G and differentiate themselves with prepaid services and bundled offerings with laptops or netbooks through agreements with retail chains.

Initial coverage is 60% of the island and that could be ramped up over the next 12-18 months depending on demand.

Digicel never embraced 3G as it sees LTE on the horizon. And the company’s CEO Colm Delves sees no contradiction in adopting a different 4G technology but rather sees it as a stepping stone toward LTE and that Digicel is merely taking advantage of the technology that is currently available.

Digicel also said last month it had reached the 11mn customer milestone mark across all of its 32 markets in the Caribbean, Central America and Pacific Islands and is forecasting high double-digit growth in data revenues across the Caribbean.

Digicel’s arch rival LIME said it plans to invest US$600mn in the Caribbean over the next five years to modernize infrastructure and launch new services.

A total of US$100mn is earmarked for Jamaica this year, with US$35mn going towards the "East-West" submarine cable linking Jamaica to the British Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic.

LIME also said it plans to launch a mobile TV service in Jamaica by Christmas. Services will be available to pre and postpaid customers via digital mobile TV-enabled phones including the Nokia 5330 and ZTE N290 models, and will be made available to BlackBerry users in the future. Initially the service will include 15 TV and five digital radio stations.

Taking a swipe at Digicel’s WiMax launch, Chris Dehring, chairman of LIME Jamaica commented, "I've noticed one of our competitors is claiming to have 4G. Well if they have 4G, we must have 'more G' since they don't have this on their mobile network.”

In other news

-Atlantic Tele-Network (ATN) said it had invested US$3.1mn to acquire a 51% controlling stake in Aruban operator Caribbean Telecom Partners.

-Offshore IT services provider Ignition reached an agreement with Digicel to deploy its virtual office cloud computing solution in the Cayman Islands.

The solution features Microsoft Office, Exchange and SharePoint as well as hosting applications such as accounting or industry-specific applications in addition to disaster recovery services.

-Installing an Internet Exchange Point (IXP) on the Caribbean island of St Lucia is a national priority, the country's permanent secretary in the Ministry of Communications, Works, Transport and Public Utilities, Allison Jean said.

Speaking at a recent Caribbean Internet Exchange Point Awareness symposium hosted by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) and US nonprofit research institute Packet Clearing House, Jean noted that IXPs were conspicuously absent, not just in St Lucia, but in the wider English-speaking Caribbean.