The Office of Utilities Regulations' (OUR) will take at least two more months to decide whether to mandate Cable & Wireless to allow emerging telecoms firms to connect to the telecom company's existing lines.

The OUR had initially committed to handing down a decision by April 14, but said on Monday that it needed another two months.

"In many countries, these types of processes have taken a long time," said Courtney Jackson, the OUR director of telecommunications. "I can tell you with some amount of certainty that we will not make that particular time (April 14). It looks like we will need an additional two months."

The regulator began consulting the industry on this matter in January - a process which in the industry is called local loop unbundling (LLU). The intention was to fast-track the process with members of the industry, in an effort to expedite the rolling out of broadband access across Jamaica.

But on Monday, Jackson told the Business Observer that he had to await the results of a cost-benefit analysis, which would "ensure that the cost of putting this particular network functionality in place does not exceed the benefit to consumers".

Jackson said the exercise was critical in order to satisfy the requirements of the legislation.

As part of the consultation, Cable & Wireless has expressed objection to being required to share its network with its competitors.

"In terms of providing comments and responding to the documents, they (C&W) have co-operated fully, but they are challenging the validity of the LLU facility," said Jackson.

"They are required to provide the extensive data so we can have a basic understanding of the pricing by C&W of the local loop."

Jackson said that dealing with C&W's objections, and securing the data "to determine the price are the main factors in determining how soon we will be able to finish the exercise".

Said Jackson: "Analyst are arriving on Wednesday (today) to give us a report on the work that they have been doing, particularly the cost-benefit analysis. They are working on it, but it can be a long and complicated process. We will have to find a way to get it implemented as soon as possible."

C&W's president, Rodney Davis, told the Business Observer that his company has been "cooperating fully with the regulator".

LLU is the process of making the physical link that connects a customer's premises to the telecommunications service provider, available for lease to other telecoms.

This issue, comes against the background of the year 2000 declaration by technology minister Phillip Paulwell that 40 per cent of Jamaicans would have access to the Internet within five years.

By 2003, the objectives expanded to include the development of technology-intensive industries, which would provide highly skilled jobs for a large number of Jamaicans.

The OUR argues that the Telecoms Act recognises that the ownership of such a facility could "induce anti-competitive behaviour and therefore contemplated that one of the competitive safeguards could be that the resource should be made available to all telecommunications operators within the country".

C&W, which has an islandwide landline system built up over decades, said that such a move would cut the return on the investment in this infrastructure, and would discourage further innovation and investments in landline technology by companies.

C&W has cautioned the OUR to be very careful in this competitive environment, so as to avoid skewing efficient investment signals for broadband development through inappropriate regulation.

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