Susan Gordon, Staff Reporter
McBurnett
As the competition within the local telecommunications market intensifies, MiPhone will offer its users more services from their cellphones.
The company has partnered with an outside telecommunications company and spent over $250 million on wireless technology to rev up the quality and range of telecommunications products and services.
Its partnership with ZTE Corporation, one of China's leading telecommunications manufacturer and wireless provider has as its objective, the upgrading of MiPhone's CDMA network.
It will facilitate in a very short while, local cellular users having the option of downloading music, tele-conferencing or watching the television from the palms of their hands with their CDMA handsets.
MiPhone is a CDMA wireless voice and internet local service provider. The recent launch of its walkie-talkie type service, MiDirect, Push-To-Talk, represents one of the services resulting from the partnership with ZTE which was made official last Wednesday at the Terra Nova Hotel.
ZTE, which was established in 1985 in Shensen, China, and employs about 30,000 people worldwide, will supply from its U.S. base, third-generation (3G) technology to MiPhone. This will allow MiPhone to add more technological features to its handsets.
Double client base
Chief executive officer of MiPhone's parent company, Oceanic Digital Jamaica Limited, Craig McBurnett, speaking about MiPhone's client base, told Sunday Business that with the new partnership, "We envision that the market will double within the next 24 months." At present, MiPhone has over 100,000 mobile clients.
Future trend
The 3G technology represents the next trend for the wireless industry and can be applied to all wideband mobile telecommu-nications services falling between 384 kbps and 2 Mbps.
United States-based executive vice-president of ZTE, Jack Yang, said the CDMA CPE terminals, CDMA infrastructure and the EV-Do wireless broadband data services are some of the products ZTE will make available to Jamaica.
In fact, Jamaica, according to Mr. McBurnett, is the 61st country in which CDMA technology is employed.
"We are looking forward to working with the local producers of content," said the chief operating officer for MiPhone, Colin Webster.
Mr. Webster said MiPhone's mobile TV underwent a soft launch last year but would be further promoted this year.
