A single powerful agency is being established to oversee Jamaica's telecommunications sector - replacing the four that now regulate various segments of the market.

The four agencies that are to be replaced are:

. the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR),
. Spectrum Management Authority,
. the Broadcasting Commission, and
. the Fair Trading Commission.

In piloting the changes to the industry, commerce, science and technology minister Phillip Paulwell is attempting to do for this sector, what Omar Davies did for the financial sector with the creation of the Financial Services Commission.

Paulwell said that with the new telecommunications policy recently approved by Cabinet, the single-regulatory body should be in place by year-end. A place was now being sought to house the agency, he said.

But a major thrust of the new policy was to facilitate what Paulwell has for long been touting as universal access of Jamaicans to technology - in particular the Internet. Jamaica however is well behind the access level that had been projected for this time.

Paulwell told JIS News - the state-controlled news agency - that "tremendous success" had been achieved in the area of voice telecommunication, and that the focus would now be on access to the Internet.

"We want to ensure that all our people have access to the Internet regardless of where they live," he said.

The industry's regulatory body, OUR, estimated that only about 10 per cent of Jamaica's 750,000 households currently have access to the Internet.

Courtney Jackson, deputy director of the OUR, has cited the high price of Internet access in Jamaica as one of the constraints to greater access.

Jackson pointed out, for example, that Cable & Wireless was the only company that provided connection to the global Internet network from Jamaica through its fibre optic network. He said this was a significant factor in the high price for Internet access as C&W had "the freedom to set prices".

However, cellular services provider Digicel Jamaica announced last week that it was now seeking investors with which to partner to build a multi-billion-dollar fibre optic network around the region. This would provide an alternative global Internet connection for Jamaicans.

Jackson cited the US$93 per month price tag for broadband access in Jamaica compared with US$12 per month in Asia.
He told JIS News that the limitation on the infrastructure side of the business was restricting Internet penetration in Jamaica and should be addressed. The OUR, he said, was encouraging operators to invest in this area in order to satisfy the "critical and urgent social needs".

Paulwell however noted that one option being explored was that few cable operators were creating a conglomerate to provide Internet access through their cable network.

Additionally, a co-location facility or 'Telecoms Hotel', known as Jamaica Network Access Point (JNAP), will be officially launched shortly, allowing operators to share overheads among themselves and to provide greater convenience in interconnection of networks at lower cost.

The facility provides interconnection of fibre, voice lines and
Internet bandwidth going to and from major carriers such as Cable&Wireless, Digicel and Centennial. It is designed to connect several carriers together to originate and terminate (provide a terminal for incoming calls) voice traffic to and from Jamaica.

This facility, Jackson noted, was available in developed markets and was a first for Jamaica and the Caribbean.

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