Despite having 1.4 million telephone lines, only two per cent of the Jamaican population have access to the Internet - a statistic which technology and industry minister, Phillip Paulwell says must change, if specific economic opportunities are to be pursued.

Of the total telephone lines, over 900,000 are cellular, with newcomer Digicel having 452,000, or 2,000 more than Cable & Wireless. The minister who made the disclosure last week Monday did not say how many customers the third cellular provider, Centennial Jamaica, has. Neither did he provide a specific cut-off date for his numbers.

Cable & Wireless, which has just over 500,000 fixed lines, are, along with InfoChannel the two largest providers of Internet service in Jamaica.

"Cable and Wireless and Digicel are now battling for lead position in terms of cellular," Paulwell told guests at the formal opening of Jampro's new office on Trafalgar Road in Kingston, last week Monday. Jampro, the government's investment promotion agency, falls under Paulwell's ministerial purview.

Paulwell said he was concerned about the fact that the potential that the Internet offered could not be tapped, because of the low access in Jamaica.

"It has tremendous potential... treat it the very same way we treat cellular services and market it in that way," the government's news agency, JIS quoted the minister as saying.

Cable & Wireless began offering cellular service in the later 1980s, service which was primarily, though not exclusively intended for those in deep rural Jamaica who would otherwise not have access to telephones.

But the company, which has enjoyed a monopoly in the telecoms market, was slow in expanding the service. Up to a year and a half ago, only a few thousand Jamaicans had cellular phones - until the government decided to auction two cellular licences, and create competition in that segment of the telecoms market.

Just months before Digicel, the first of the two additional cellular providers came on stream - in April last year - C&W became very aggressive in the market, rapidly expanding its customer base.

But after only a few weeks of operating, Digicel was able to offer more Jamaicans cellular service than Cable and Wireless did in over 10 years of providing that service. In the process Digicel unleashed major competition for market share.

The upshot is that Jamaica is now ranked number three by the International Telecommunications Union in terms of per capita use of cellular service.

"We want to be number one," said Paulwell on Monday. "Jamaicans love to talk and we are going to be number one."

Paulwell praised Jampro for its role in attracting investment to Jamaica, noting that part of that investment was in information communications technology (ICT), an area which he said was critical for future development.

Said the minister: "ICT is the basis on which everything else will rest for the future so as a government, we are shortly going to be demonstrating the effective use of ICT for more transparency in government... and enabling our people wherever they are to interface with government without having to travel to Kingston."

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