Michelle English, general manager of Flow Communications. - File

Susan Gordon, Business Reporter

FLOW PLANS to partner with all telephone providers in the island under a plan to eliminate cross-network call charges, says General Manager, Michelle English.

English, while not committing to a timeline, said the communications company, hopes to have the arrangements in place by the time it completes the island-wide roll-out of its service.

Currently, Flow is partnering with MiPhone and most recently extended this to Cash Plus subsidiaries MegaPhone and WorldPhone to offer those clients free calling through its network.

Under the arrangement, Mi-Phone's customers have to sign up with Flow for its triple pay package. The installation is done free of cost.

"MiPhone's partnership is doing well and is being extended to all the MegaPhone and World Phone customers and we see it as a success," said English referring to the two-year-old partnership.

"We feel you should do away with the local measured service where, when you call your neighbour, you have to pay extra," said English.

Flow is now pushing the pro-gramme more aggressively, with English noting that it was a priority project. Cable and Wireless Jamaica has already introduced a flat rate of $10 and $8 per minute for peak and off-peak hours respectively regardless of the network.

Chief rival Digicel is yet to follow.

"There is no additional charge or cost where the calls come from the other network so there's an artificial cost which he consumer has to pay," said English.

Digicel charges its clients an average of $7.75 extra per minute to make calls to other cellular networks and an additional $2 per minute to call land linesat peak hours.

Outside of the arrangement it has with Flow, MiPhone also charges between $6 to $17 extra for calls made to land lines and other networks, depending on the rate and pre-paid plan.

It is not clear how much cross network calls impact on the revenue of telecommunication provider, especially since in most instances a person has at least two phones from two separate providers.

Up to press time The Financial Gleaner was unable to get a comment from the two providers on the issue.

susan.gordon@gleanerjm.com