Telecommunications company Cable & Wireless this week announced a 30 per cent increase in the rate it charges its cellular phone customers to dial into the network of Gotel - a recently established landline phone company.

The rate is now at $13 per minute, up from $10 per minute.
C&W said that the increase was a response to the earlier increase in the rate at which Gotel itself charges C&W for terminating calls into its network. Previously, C&W paid Gotel about 50 cents per minute for each call made by its customers into Gotel's network. The new rate is $7 per minute.

In the statement announcing the rate increase, Ian Neita, CWJ's senior vice-president in charge of mobile services said the rate increase was unavoidable, given the magnitude of the increase it faced.

"Following a 1,400 per cent increase in incoming termination rates for calls made to Gotel numbers (effective August 1), Cable & Wireless Jamaica has reluctantly increased its call charges to its prepaid mobile customers for calling Gotel numbers," said Neita . "The new per minute rate is $13 - up from $10."

Jamaica's telecommunication providers charge each other what is called a termination fee, when customers call into each other's network. The termination fee, which is passed on to the calling-customer, is a major factor in the cost that cellular customers pay for making calls.

In explaining the increase, Neita said C&W needed to recover the cost of providing the service to customers.

"Regrettably, our company has been forced to increase our charges to our prepaid customers because if we maintained the previous rate we would not have been able to recover the cost of the new termination rate plus the costs associated with handling the calls over our network," he said.

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