One cellphone, cheaper rates — that’s all we want

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Dear Editor,

I have had a long-standing love-hate relationship with LIME over the years and to tell the truth, I was glad when competition came into the telephone industry.

I was one of the many who believed that LIME (then Cable & Wireless) could have charged us less than they did at the time, especially for cellular calls, but they were the only ones in the market, so that was that.

But I must admit that when I looked at the two similar cases that most Jamaicans would be most familiar with, it seems that is how most telephone monopolies behaved in the past. I am referring to AT&T in the US and British Telecom (BT) in the UK (still does not exonerate LIME).

But for me, all of that is now in the past. Today’s reality in Jamaica demands that (and here I agree with the LIME general manager Mr Sinclair) Jamaicans should be able to carry only one phone and call any network for approximately the same price.

I am listening to and reading the arguments from both sides of the current debate and quite frankly, I do not know how the people at Digicel can be trying to convince the Jamaican public that they are not about unreasonably high prices. Their per minute charge to call off their network has, for a long time, been about $17.00 per minute.

Even now that they are offering an inadequate $3.50 reduction, $14.00 is still way too high. When the call goes the other way, LIME charges $12.00. There is something radically wrong there.

Of connected interest is the fact that on their own network Digicel charges their own customers $10 per minute to call each other, while LIME charges $8.00. I believe Claro charged $4.00. It is clear to many of us that Digicel’s business model is based on charging high prices.

When the CEO for Digicel boasts that Digicel has not increased prices in 10 years, I wonder if he thought that through before he said it. Talking about how the price of everything, including utilities, has gone up is of little relevance. If you look at electricity in Jamaica, just compare the price of oil 10 years ago to now.

But keeping it in the arena of telephone calls, rates almost everywhere have gone down significantly. Right here in Jamaica, all you have to do is compare the cost of overseas calls 10 years ago to what they are now. Rubbish argument.

And Digicel should stop trying to distract us with its planned 4G rollout. We want it, yes, but most of us just simply want to talk for less.

I am sure the people Digicel is going to get to rebut this letter will want to keep digging up the past, but that’s exactly what it is — the past. What needs to be dealt with is the present. Jamaicans want to be able to carry one phone and call any network for roughly the same price.

Some of us are starting to wonder if Digicel is afraid that the new offerings from LIME might find favour with existing Digicel customers if the calling rates from network to network were the same.

Simon Anderson

St Catherine

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One cellphone, cheaper rates — that’s all we want