Susan Gordon, Staff Reporter
THE MOBILE phone industry experienced modest growth in 2005 say the major players in the industry. After years of spectacular growth, the market slowed last year as competition for customers reached an intense level, with new products and services being offered at highly competitive prices.
Major player Cable and Wireless Jamaica Limited reported consistent growth in its cellular business each month since October 2005 while Digicel reported an increase of over 10 per cent in its mobile customer base in Jamaica. According to Mr. Harry Smith, commercial director for Digicel Jamaica, Digicel gained 24,000 new customers in the month of October 2005 alone.
New products and initiatives, which made a difference in the mobile market were the Anyone Plan, The Closed User Groups and the GPRS services introduced by Cable and Wireless Jamaica (CWJ). Vice-President of Corporate Affairs, Errol Miller, felt that these initiatives by his company grew the market more in minutes more than numbers of customers being served.
"The biggest challenge in 2005 was creating a customer-focused culture within our company so each employee would put the customer first," said Mr. Miller. "This is an ongoing process, but so far we have made commendable strides and we are seeing the customers come back to CWJ as a result."
It was a defining year for MiPhone in many respects and proved the most successful year yet, said Helen Allison-Minott, communications specialist for MiPhone. She further outlined that MiPhone experienced substantial growth and significant increase in its market shares.
STANDARD PREPAID CALLING PLAN
MiPhone introduced the MiRewards product, which is a standard prepaid calling plan that allowed its mobile customers to earn $1 and $100 free credit per minute on all inbound calls from other networks, thus saving money. MiPhone could also get a 10 per cent call discounts on all calls made over five minutes. It also introduced the MiWorld, MiCircle and Inbound Bonus roaming plans for customers who make or receive calls overseas. The company added 12 new sites in the year.
Mr. Smith said Digicel was the only company in the sector which did not to offer any network product or service at an increased rate during the year. "During 2005, Digicel introduced the lowest texting and phone rates in the telecommunications sectors ($1 per min) in Jamaica," he said.
The company brought to the market, prepaid roaming to the UK and other countries in Europe as well as the Caribbean as well as GPRS Roaming, Rollover minutes for post paid customers, the popular 'Please Call Me' product and the Closed User Group product for its corporate clients among others.
"Due to the large number of people joining the Digicel network during the last three months of the year there was pressure on our network capacity," said Mr. Smith listing a major challenge of last year. He also described the 'sluggish' process of granting licences in some Caribbean countries and the slow down in the economy in the first part of the year as challenges which resulted in a lower rate of net additions to the network .
Mrs. Allison-Minot noted that the purchasing power of consumers was seriously challenged by the difficult social and economic conditions that persisted through the year.
She said this created an environment that was not conducive to the retail trade. She said another challenge was overcoming the price differences between the CDMA handsets used by MiPhone and the less expensive TDMA (GSM) handsets. This challenge was minimised later in the year as the competitors removed subsidies from their handsets and levelled the playing field.
