WESTERN BUREAU - Oceanic Digital Jamaica, trading as MiPhone, on Saturday opened its new sales office in Montego Bay as part of its ongoing expansion programme that is to bring its cellular coverage of the island to 95 per cent by year end.

The office that opened at the Baywest Shopping Centre in the resort city on Saturday morning cost an estimated J$10 million to set up, according to the company's regional sales manager for western Jamaica, Wilfred Bailey.

"It is very much our mandate to provide islandwide coverage, which means 95 per cent of the population should be able to access our service," Bailey told the Observer on Saturday evening. "We are going full speed ahead to finish the build-out."
Oceanic acquired licences at the time of the government's initial auction of mobile telephone frequencies. But having paid US$45 million for the licence four years ago, it has been slow to build out its network, in part because of cash problems and company re-organisation.

This allowed Digicel, the Irish-owned mobile company to grab a big lead in market share and for Cable & Wireless Jamaica, previously the telecommunications monopoly, to stage a big fightback.
But Oceanic, with an estimated 75,000 MiPhone subscribers or about five per cent of the market, is now expanding its network, going after market share - primarily, it appears, at the business end of the market.
Oceanic operates on a CDMA platform.

The company is funding its network build-out through a US$30-million loan it received in March from the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) in March.
The company intends, in short order, to increase its transmission sites from current 57 to the 89, and according to Bailey, offer competitive packages in order to woo customers. Ten additional cell sites to cover areas like Lucea and Savanna-la-Mar are to be built shortly.

"We will be bringing to the market the most exciting packages and the very competitive rates for persons to switch. The other operators are not likely to be able to follow us," he said.
Among those packages, he added, is the introduction of the use of MiPhone cellular phones as home phones, which is to translate into savings for customers who opt to designate their service as such.

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