John Myers Jr., Staff Reporter
Craig McBurnett (left), chief executive officer of MiPhone and Alex Hill, vice-president for sales and marketing. They were attending the Gleaner Editors' Forum at the Gleaner's downtown Kingston offices yesterday. - RICARDO MAKYN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
UP TO half of the international calls terminating in Jamaica bypass the formal channels of the island's telecommunication service providers. Representatives of Cable & Wireless Jamaica (C&WJ), Digicel and MiPhone said yesterday.
"It is anywhere from 20 to 50 per cent ...," Craig McBurnett, chief executive officer of MiPhone, told a Gleaner Editors' Forum held at the newspaper's North Street head office yesterday.
From the United States alone, outgoing traffic to Jamaica in 2002 amounted to 524 million minutes, providing US$168 million in customer revenues in 2002, Office of Utilities Regulation executive Ansord Hewitt told an Internet conference last year.
its importance in their overall revenue streams has declined, calls coming into the island still provide a major source of income for local telephone service providers, and thus impact on government tax revenues.
Mr. McBurnett explained that the service providers are aware this was happening, but it is the Government and regulators of the industry which have the capacity to tackle the problem.
Sean Bryan, chief operating officer of C&WJ, said, "It is not a problem that any of us would want to ignore or could afford to ignore."
Mr. Bryan said his company had put a special team in place to monitor the illegal activity.
IMPACTING ON THE ECONOMY
David Hall, chief executive officer of Digicel, said that while this was generally a concern to the service providers, "It's not that it is impacting on (our) operations, it's actually impacting on the Jamaican economy."
On June 1, the Government imposed a special cess on international calls to Jamaica.
The funds generated from the cess are to be used to fund the USF, which was established as part of the Government's efforts to increase access to data services and the Internet.
Colin Campbell, chairman of the Universal Service Fund, the entity created by the technology minister to collect, manage and disburse the funds under the USF, said that $160 million has so far been collected over the four months since the cess was implemented.
Mr. Campbell told Wednesday Business that he could not comment on whether illegal activity was affecting revenue collection as it was too early to determine if there was a shortfall.
He said all the companies involved have been making payments as required.
Mr. Paulwell had projected to raise $1 billion in revenues from the fund within a year.
