- RICARDO MAKYN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Craig McBurnett (left), chief executive officer of MiPhone, and Alex Hill, vice-president for sales and marketing.
EARLIER THIS month, The Gleaner hosted an Editors' Forum with telecommunication providers Cable and Wireless, Digicel and MiPhone. The market leaders turned out at very senior levels to discuss critical issues affecting the huge industry. Here are some excerpts from the sitting.
Sean Bryan - Chief operating officer, Cable and Wireless:
Cable and Wireless has a uniqueness in Jamaica, in that we are a full-service provider and that's something that we hold very proudly. So, we are traditionally a fixed-line provider and we have grown into the market as mobile has come along and as new technologies such as ADSL have come along. There have been many people over the last five, six, seven years with fixed-line licences. We haven't seen many people take the effort to actually make an investment which would match our licence.
We really want to take the Jamaican public and the Jamaican marketplace into the 21st century in terms of availability of ADSL. We have done that in two ways: We have put in over 80,000 ports for ADSL capacity across the nation. We have also got healthy increases in our direction towards getting even 50,000 subscribers by the end of this fiscal year, that will be April, and we are working with a number of partners to look at how we can increase that service.
Heather Shields - Head of marketing, Digicel:
Certainly it's been a rocket ride, it's been an incredible almost five years. The fastest-growing telecom company in probably the world, and we basically managed along the way to expand into the region and capture about 60 per cent of the market share overall. One of the things that we have done that we are particularly proud of, is we've managed to maintain a number-one spot in customer care over the past year, past four quarters, as independently assessed.
Customer care has always been one of our number-one priorities, as is network coverage. We now have 95 per cent population coverage with over 730 sites across the island, and we are planning $1.5 billion worth of investment into that network over the next five years, every year for the next five years. So, of course, we are here to stay and we are looking at even greater things for our customers over the next while.
Craig McBurnett - CEO of MiPhone:
I think the true change is on the way as we talk about telecommunication. It is now evolving into a third phase, as we move out of the monopolistic era and the break-up phase to the initial launch of competitive carriers. Things have begun to settle down a little bit and we can focus on serving our customers and serving our community, and that is precisely what MiPhone has kept as a hallmark, as we have rejuvenated this company and relaunched in the market. We use 'Seniormay' technology. It's a superior mobile technology. It's superior because it is much more efficient use of the bandwidth, and that's going to become absolutely critical.
We have got to use those airwaves much more efficiently, and MiPhone has the platform to deliver and we work very hard to finish the work that had started a few years ago with our network islandwide, and we continue to build out and fill in the holes.
So we've got the launch pad for new applications that will actually change all of our lives even more significantly than the changes we've seen over the last few years.
The second hallmark is the whole area of innovative products. It's one thing to carry voice, everyone who knows that application knows how important it was to have voice communication, but it doesn't stop there and MiPhone knew this. We immediately realised we had to be in a position to provide creative products, to provide creative pricing and to be able to deliver customer-important features and functionality, and that's exactly what we've done as we've reconstituted this company. We have repositioned ourselves as the innovative leader in this market when it comes to introducing products, when it comes to introducing innovative pricing plans and delivering on special feature functionality.
HELPING OUT OUR SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES
Sean Bryan, Cable and Wireless:
We are also working with the Government to see how we can utilise that capability we have to increase access to schools. We've got most of the schools on dial up. We would like to get the schools on to broadband. We are working with the rest of the Caribbean getting educational development through ADSL to schools and primary schools. We see an obligation as part of being a corporate citizen in Jamaica, that we are delivering things to make Jamaica a better place to live. We are doing that through the technologies and our investment.
Heather Shields, Digicel:
We have also launched the Digicel Foundation, which is something we are particularly proud of. The vision of the Foundation is to look at bettering lives and communities across Jamaica from a social, cultural, educational standpoint, so we are focussing on children. The Foundation has done projects such as the Lakes Pen Basic School. We have done projects like the Arnett Gardens playingfield. When we realize that when you put something in a community where people can gather and be comfortable that helps the community tremendously, and it does a lot, and the foundation will be doing a lot of those kinds of projects over the next few years.
One of the unique aspects of the Foundation is that it is fully staffed by Digicel staff members. The board is made up of staff members from the admin assistant up to the directors. They are the ones who are doing the work, they are the ones that get their feet wet, they are the ones who get down and dirty, so basically it's a very hands-on approach to charity, it's a very hands on approach to giving back to the community.
COMPETITION
Sean Bryan, Cable and Wireless:
We come from a monopoly background and that's hampered us in terms of understanding how we face competition. I mean, let's see how monopolies have fared on the market.
That is a bit of attraction to change mind set within the organisation. I'll be quite frank we are very comfortable with competition. We have lived with competition well enough. We fully understand that to be successful in Cable & Wireless we have to be competitive and I mean competitive in every sense. So we no longer own the market, we know that, but I think you have seen the response over the last 18 months and how we were really trying to drive out any ineptness within our organization, and I welcome competition. You are just making us better.
Heather Shields, head of marketing Digicel:
We are Digicel, broad competition to the telecom branch in Jamaica, and we are glad to hear that it is welcomed because we thrive on it. It does also make us better. And, as we look into the future, into the next five years we basically are prepared for whatever the market brings and just to make sure our customers are happy and that we bring them the best that telecom has to offer.
Craig McBurnett, MiPhone:
What has always struck me about this market is Jamaicans deserve better customer care than they have received, especially in the telecommunications area. So since I first got here, I have made customer care a hallmark of everything I do, giving it the utmost importance, that we treat customers like we want to be treated. There is a level of respect, a level of responsiveness that we cannot compromise on, and it cuts across all market segments, it cuts across all socio-economic levels, and so we are extremely proud of the progress we've made in the whole area of customer care.
Look out for more excerpts later this week.
