By Andrew Green, Staff ReporterCABLE & WIRELESS Jamaica (C&WJ) is to increase the cost of calls to Cuba on July 21, with other service providers expected to follow.
The rate is to be increased to $66 per minute from the present $18, said Errol Miller, C&WJ's corporate communications manager, in an exclusive interview. Other international call service providers are also expected to increase their rates.
"At present, Cable & Wireless Jamaica charges $18 per minute to Cuba, but has to pay approximately $50 per minute to the Cuban telephone administration," he said. "The adjustment is necessary to better align the rate charged for calls from Jamaica with the actual costs of these calls."
NEW RATE
The new rate will apply to calls made from fixed lines, mobile telephones and the use of calling cards.
The company decided in October, last year, to cut its rates to $18 per minute for calls anywhere in the world. Mr. Miller said "we were losing to Cuba, but we were making money on our major routes which would subsidise Cuba."
The United States, Britain and Canada are main overseas call markets for C&WJ. Cuba, he said, is its ninth largest market.
As it held the exclusive licence to offer overseas telephone service, C&WJ provided facilities for its domestic market competitors to route their Cuban-destined calls at a rate of $15 per minute, Mr. Miller said. With liberalisation of the international call market, competitors have opted to use their own telecommunications networks, except for the C&WJ subsidised Cuba route.
LEGITIMATELY ROUTE
"All our competitors will legitimately route their Cuba-destined traffic through us," he said. "We lose a significant amount of money on that."
An additional difficulty was that some competitors illegitimately routed traffic originating from the United States through C&WJ to take advantage of the subsidised rate. "It is a big business right now," he said.
In one day, some companies have generated traffic to Cuba equivalent to more than half the entire traffic Jamaica would normally generate in a month. He said "it is fraud because we don't have an agreement with them to supply us with that traffic. That is why we are able to police it."
But the result of the reliance on C&WJ is that the increase in the retail rate to its competitors will precipitate a generalised increase in rates. He said "nobody else will be able to find a route as cheap as we offered before. All other rates to Cuba will go up."
