( left - right ) MILLER and PAULWELL
JAMAICANS' INCREASING preference for wireless technology has forced Government to abandon plans to install 217,000 new telephone landlines over a three-year period, Phillip Paulwell, Minister of Commerce, Science and Technology has said.
Mr. Paulwell announced the planned installations in 2000, the same year the Telecommunications Act was passed, deregulating the existing Cable and Wireless monopoly and resulting in the entry of new cellular providers Digicel and MiPhone as of 2001.
Mr. Paulwell said the expansion project had been on course for its first two years before the demand fell off.
"Those things are behind us," Mr. Paulwell said of the project this week. "Many people have now refused to have landlines, people have not paid their bills and people have given up their landlines."
He added: "But the fact is that what we are trying to achieve with landlines is voice telephony penetration. The concern now has to do with access to data, access to the Internet - that's where our people are at and they want to be able to do so using their cellphones."
Cellular penetration has increased since liberalisation, with Digicel and MiPhone joining Cable & Wireless in the cellular market in 2001. Digicel alone now has 1.3 million cellular customers.
With 460,000 landlines, all provided by C&WJ, Jamaica is ranked 20th out of 24 in landline penetration in the Caribbean.
Errol Miller, C&WJ's head of corporate communications, admitted recently that the substitution of cellular phones for landlines has caused "a significant effect on the growth of the fixed market.
"While Cable & Wireless did not achieve the target of 217,000 new gross lines, the company did in fact add more than that number of customers onto its network during the period using facilities previously installed," Mr. Miller said.
