Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter
David Hall at the Gleaner Editors' Forum yesterday. - RICARDO MAKYN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
JAMAICA HAS room to add half a million more cellphone users over the next three years before reaching saturation point, according to Digicel Chief Executive Officer David Hall.
This would bring the total number of cell users to 2.5 million, just 100,000 less than the national population.
Hall and representatives of cellular phone companies Cable & Wireless Jamaica and MiPhone yesterday forecasted that there was room for expansion of the cellular or mobile phone sector through a variety of product offerings.
ORIGINAL BUSINESS PLAN
"When we first came to Jamaica in 2000, I remember people saying to us at the time that 400,000 would be the saturation level," Hall told a Gleaner Editors' Forum yesterday. A total of 300,000 customers, he added, was the target of Digicel's original business plan.
Digicel now has 1.3 million customers, Cable & Wireless 600,000 and Oceanic Digital, operators of MiPhone, 100,000. The potential for further growth, he believed, was proven by cellphone ownership of over 100 per cent in countries such as Finland and Sweden.
All three companies admitted that competition in the cellphone market, which began with the entry of Digicel in 2000, had made the market more competitive for customers.
Digicel head of marketing, Heather Shields, said Digicel aims to expand its customer base by increasing coverage of the population from 95 to 100 per cent and by investing $1.5 million annually over the next five years. "Our focus is on making sure our customers and the population have greater network coverage," she added.
Cable & Wireless Chief Operating Officer, Shaun Bryan, conceded his company's monopoly status had hampered it in the past in remaining competitive.
However, "... The Jamaican user is in for a pleasant ride in the next few years as we all make a commitment to customer care," said Mr. Bryan. "We have got an opportunity, now that we are not the major market stakeholder, to acquire customers from others (and) we have cut our calls to other networks and we hope customers will recognise this."
Keeping up with advances in technology will ensure continued market growth for MiPhone, said CEO Craig McBurnett: "The ability to consume the service that we bring to the market is a product of one's imagination and one's imagination is clearly not limited."
MiPhone plans in several months to offer Brew technology which will allow customers to customise applications on their phone. Customers will be able to choose from a library of applications such as email, weather and ring tones.
