CABLE AND Wireless Jamaica (C&WJ) is prepared for the competition which will open up after Saturday, March 1, when Jamaica's telecommunications market is fully deregulated, says its president Gary Barrow.
Following the liberalisation of domestic telecommunications services in September 2001, international voice services will be opened to competition this Saturday. But C&WJ had started preparing for that day from several years ago, Mr. Barrow said.
"We are comfortable that we are on the right track," the president said. The company is in line with worldwide standards and ahead in some respects.
One measure of this is the number of employees per line. In 1988, the company served 89,000 customers and had 4,700 employees. Now, with 1.1 million customers, the company serves them with 2,550 staff.
After enjoying a century of exclusive market access, there was "build-up of fat," Mr. Barrow said. Trimming this excess came through automation and restructuring business processes.
An example of the impact of automation was in the operator services department where 200 operators spent more than 90 per cent of the time completing local collect calls. That process was automated, resulting in a radical change in that department.
Many of the functions which were handled through its network of business offices are now done more efficiently through the centralised call centre. Several of those business centres have now been closed.
Ninety per cent of calls are handled within 20 seconds and 95 per cent of problems are resolved at the first point of contact at the call centre, he said. In the past, someone might have stood in line for 45 minutes just to get a problem heard.
The biggest challenge for C&WJ has been its cultural transformation, he said. The company has been working with the unions on "some of the changes we have to go through as we prepare ourselves for competition. The relationship has improved dramatically."
Most critically, rebalancing of rates means the company is less dependent on revenue from overseas telephone calls. The formerly subsidised rates for internal calls have risen while those for overseas calls have fallen.
From a point when the company got as much as 70 per cent of its revenues from incoming overseas calls, it now gets 22 per cent from that source. Outgoing calls accounts for 10 per cent of the revenue base.
That shift in the revenue streams has been a painful one for the company. Net profit attributable to shareholders peaked at $3.9 billion in the 2001 financial year, before dropping to $3.1 billion in the following year. And for the nine months to December 2002, net profits attributable to shareholders remained below the level for the equivalent period in the previous year.
Building the Cable and Wireless revenue stream means developing products which capitalise on the company's strengths. He said this has caused the company to place greater emphasis on sales and marketing.
The company realised three years ago that it was investing a great deal in support services. It was decided to out-source several areas of the business. One example was the decision to divest its vehicle management department and rationalise its portfolio of buildings, selling and leasing back several properties.
Its regional presence in 13 other Caribbean islands helped Cable and Wireless retain many of its corporate customers because it offers the facility for them to travel around the region and still use their mobile telephones, he said.
The Caribbean network has also presented the opportunity for cost savings. The region is served by three call centres in Anguilla, Barbados and Jamaica. The centre in Jamaica thus shares the responsibility for serving the entire region.
A billing system is now being put in place now to serve the entire region, operating through hubs in Barbados and Jamaica.
A pre-paid calling card, which will be accepted across the Caribbean, is to be introduced, and the Standard Messaging Services (SMS) system, used for sending text messages, is now operated through one platform based in Jamaica.
"We are in the rest of the region so we can capitalise on economies of scale," Mr. Barrow said.
But perhaps the most formidable weapon in the company's arsenal is its infrastructure. The centrepiece is a submarine fibre optic ring around the island, which is linked to another cable running to the United States.
Some competitors have established independent satellite links to serve their customers, and this will work well for voice transmission, Mr. Barrow said. But fibre optic cable is "far superior as a transmission means where resilience and capacity are important."
In the growing market for data transmission, the capacity, quality and reliability of the cable system offers the company a major advantage, he said.
The company has had to make large 'outpayments' to third party operators for all calls originating from its network and terminating on theirs. But Mr. Barrow said the company expects to earn revenue as its competitors will be forced to rely on its already established telecommunications infrastructure. Given its infrastructure, regional reach, trimmer operation and with years of preparation leading up to this moment, whatever happens after Saturday, "we are ready," Mr. Barrow said.
