AT&T Wireless will depend on existing cell sites to provide roaming service to its US customers visiting Jamaica.

WESTERN BUREAU - AT&T Wireless is entering into agreements with existing cellular companies in Jamaica, to use part of their infrastructure to set up its service here - a strategy apparently made possible by the fact that the Americans will be going after a different market from that shared by the other three cellular providers already firmly rooted in Jamaica.

Having earlier this year paid some US$6 million for the licence - a fraction of the over US$45 million paid by both Digicel and Centennial - AT&T expects to spend US$5 million on the first phase of its build-out in Montego Bay and Ocho Rios.

The company will be providing roaming services in Jamaica for its American cell customers who visit the island as tourists.

"Jamaica is a very mature mobile network with many excellent incumbents," says Sidney Roberts, AT&T's international director of implementation. "So the business proposition that AT&T Wireless sees at this point in time is the roam-only network to serve the huge number of travellers that come to your great country for business as well as pleasure."

There are nearly two million cell phones in use in Jamaica, representing the combined customer base of the three companies, and ranking this market among the highest level of cellular phone penetration in the world.

Roberts told guests at a reception hosted by his company at the Wexford Hotel in Montego Bay on Wednesday, that AT&T Wireless would not be competing in the local market for existing customers.

"We will not initially be selling local service or selling devices," he stressed. "Instead, our goal here is to service folks coming into the country so their device looks and feels and behaves the same way it does when they are in any other part of the world and they are a roaming partner with AT&T Wireless."

The use of existing cell sites and other infrastructure will not only save AT&T Wireless upfront capital expenditure, it will enable the company to avoid some of the contentious environmental issues that other firms had to face when they were launching their network in Jamaica.

"We are very aware that mobile structures are not beautiful structures," he said. "One of the things that I can do and which I do around the region is I try to make use of every existing structure in the form of buildings (and) existing mono-poles so that we can host our antennas on existing facilities and mitigate the requirement for individual greenfield sites."

Roberts said that progress had been made in the discussions with the other cellular service providers that already had their antennas in the ground. "We are making some progress and a large fraction of the base stations in Montego Bay and Ocho Rios will either be on existing poles or existing structures."

AT&T, which has operations in 15 other Caribbean islands, now has 45 million subscribers in the USA - following its acquisition by US rival, Cingular. It is therefore now one of the largest cell companies in the world. It will operate a GSM 1900 network in Jamaica.

When completed, phase one will provide coverage in Montego Bay and Ocho Rios for roaming subscribers, in line with the company's strategy of making a soft entry into the Jamaican market.

"The key phase that we are in now is the site acquisition," explained Roberts. "No mobile telephony network has ever got off the ground without a number of radio-based stations to host the antennas and that is the phase that we are working in right now."

He was unable to provide a completion date for the first phase of the expansion.

"It just goes on until we expand the network... We are looking at the demographics, we are looking at where the resorts are, and as the company decides to go forward we will expand the network," he told the Observer after his address.

He added: "These base stations and the switches (that will be set up) do not run themselves. We will require local, technical staff. I am not going to say how many and when but I can say we have done this on all the islands in the Caribbean and our intention is hiring local."

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