By Robert Beers, Gleaner WriterCENTENNIAL Digital Jamaica had its first day up and running yesterday along with an advertising campaign launched simultaneously promising "a one-of-a-kind" mobile phone service.
Initially, outbound service is limited to Kingston, St. Andrew and St. Catherine. Most of the rest of the island will be covered by April 2002.
Centennial knows that it is trying to carve out customers in a cell phone market that is already highly competitive, with the long-dominant Cable & Wireless, and Digicel, a newcomer from Ireland, both offering cellular service.
MARKETING PLAN
Centennial's marketing plan focuses on offering a minimum rate of $7 a minute and is exclusively prepaid, at least for now. Customers can buy cards for various denominations and receive the equivalent number of minutes.
"Cable & Wireless and Digicel have achieved pretty good penetration in Jamaica, so our target is to broaden the market out," said the company's chief operating officer, James Beneda.
To do so, Centennial's market research shows prepaid services with no connection fees are the most attractive options to their potential customer base.
"Our target is 50 per cent of all new phones purchased in the next six months," Mr. Beneda said. Centennial is hoping for some 47,000 customers in its first year.
Centennial will have five owned and operated stores, and numerous company kiosks selling its products. Its phone cards will be sold at independent distributors.
Even before the first customer was on the phone, the company spent US$130 million in start-up costs and has hired 157
employees.
The new cell service providers hope to make an impact on the market with TV, radio and print ads that emphasise quality signals and low prices. The TV commercials were shot in St. Catherine and the Corporate Area. The large production crew was led by Advertising and Marketing Jamaica and Sajo and Garcia from Puerto Rico. There are also a variety of radio spots ready to flood the airwaves, along with full colour ads and inserts in
newspapers.
Centennial is pinning its hopes on penetrating the Jamaican cell market with its competitive rate structure and a quality signal via a technology called Code Division Multiple Access or CDMA. This is, according to Centennial, a state-of the-art system that will outperform the technology used by Cable & Wireless and Digicel.
Down the road of the information superhighway, Centennial Digital Jamaica will introduce phones that can roam the Internet digitally in eight to 10 months.
