Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter

The cost of phone calls within Jamaica could soon be lowered if the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) upholds a decision that would allow it to fix the cost of terminating calls to mobile phones.

OUR Director General, J. Paul Morgan, said an announcement would come within the next four weeks, following an appeal by telecommunications firm Digicel against the ruling which declared all cellular companies as 'dominant', thus allowing the OUR to intervene and fix the cost of calls.

However, Cable & Wireless wants the OUR to intervene, and MiPhone's Chief Operating Officer, Colin Webster, while supporting lowering all termination costs, said his company was cautious about further market intervention by the regulator.

Drive down the cost

"Once the declaration is made and effective then we will have the legal right to fix those termination charges ... it will drive down the cost of fixed line to mobile calling rates and it could also impact on the mobile to mobile calling rate," Mr. Morgan told The Gleaner yesterday.

Speaking yesterday at a press conference at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston, C&W top brass visiting Jamaica from the company's London headquarters - its second largest of 33 markets - said they had raised the issue with Government.

Perhaps confident that the OUR would uphold its decision, C&W said regulators in the Caribbean had a "duty" to end what they claim is the practice of "some mobile network operators ... holding costs artificially high."

Chris Hethrington, C&W chief executive for the Caribbean and the Americas, charged that 85 per cent of the charge levied on landline to mobile calls currently goes to the mobile operator - a figure confirmed by the OUR director general.

However, Digicel Chief Executive Officer, David Hall, responded that C&W were behaving like "cowboys" and were fighting to maintain their market share which has eroded since the liberalisation of the telecommunications industry in 2001.

- ross.sheil@gleanerjm.com