By McPherse Thompson, Staff Reporter
CELLULAR PROVIDER, Digicel, has accused Cable & Wireless (C&W) of slowing the launch of its Eastern Caribbean operations by refusing to allow the competitor interconnection to its telephone network.
Digicel has placed advertisements in markets there urging potential customers not to purchase phones until its own network is up and running.
The Jamaican office of C&W, when contacted by Wednesday Business, said the problem was that both parties have so far failed to reach an interconnection agreement. Interconnection is the term covering the requirements for the process by which the network of one service provider can to talk to the network of another.
"We are not being malicious. We are not trying to keep them out of the market," Everald Edwards, corporate communications manager at C&W in Kingston said Monday.
Seamus Lynch, Digicel Jamaica's chief operating officer, said the company has so far spent between US$50 million and US$60 million to put in place infrastructure for its cellular operations on the islands of St. Lucia and St. Vincent. He said that since June, Digicel has been in discussion with C&W with a view to an interconnection agreement, but to date it has not been granted.
Mr. Lynch said they have been granted licences to operate in St. Lucia and St. Vincent, and were finalising the terms of a licence to also set up business in Grenada. In St. Lucia and St. Vincent, "we are in the process of finalising the building of our network. We have our infrastructure in place and we thought at this point that we would have been interconnected," he said, adding that "it's very frustrating, to say the least."
With the delay in granting interconnection, Mr. Lynch said Digicel has suggested that C&W in those countries copy the model interconnection agreement that was used in Jamaica just before it entered the market early last year, but C&W was still holding out.
As a result of the delay, Digicel has launched an advertising campaign in both Eastern Caribbean islands, "to highlight the fact that competition is being prevented by Cable and Wireless," according to Mr. Lynch.
Digicel advertisements in St. Lucia over last weekend quoted Errald Miller, chief executive officer of C&W West Indies, as saying that he never had a problem with competition. The Digicel advertisements suggested that C&W was acting contrary to this statement.
The advertisements accused C&W of ignoring the requests of the St. Lucian authorities to "allow other 'phone networks to talk to yours" and urged consumers not to buy a telephone now, but to hold off for competition.
Digicel has been granted licences to compete in the telecommunications market in the Eastern Caribbean by virtue of an agreement C&W signed in May, this year, to relinquish its exclusive licences in the region.
The move came after months of negotiations between the London-based C&W and individual governments in the Eastern Caribbean, following Jamaica's liberalisation process consequent on a new Telecommunications Act that was promulgated in 2000.
Cable & Wireless Jamaica has agreed to a phased liberalisation of the local market, which will be fully opened to competition as of March 2003.
