Cable and Wireless Jamaica on Friday launched a new pre-paid phone card that will allow its fixed line and post-paid cellular customers to call overseas for less than the cost of placing a call to a local cellular phone.

With the card, called Jus Talk, users will pay a flat rate of $7 per minute to call the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, a price that C&WJ expects will help it capture a huge slice of the international calling card business.

Cable & Wireless Jamaica (CWJ) CEO, Rodney Davis, displays the company's new Jus Talk calling card at the product launch held at the CWJ corporate office in Kingston.

"Jus Talk is going to be the ace among calling cards in the Jamaican market place as Cable and Wireless aims to reassert its leadership in this area," said Roger Richards, C&WJ's senior vice president of Internet, Voice and Data. "We have great rates for calling major destinations," Richards added as he addressed members of the media during the launch at the company's corporate headquarters in Kingston.

The phone cards can be used to make domestic and international calls. It can also be used to call Jamaica from the US, Canada, the UK and selected countries in the Caribbean. Customers must use either fixed-line phones, public phones or post-paid mobile phones.

Richards said that the feature which enable customers to use the cards overseas is another Cable & Wireless innovation that is expected to help the company boost its market share.
"The ability to call back to Jamaica from these destinations with the same card is just another distinguishing feature," he said.
The cost of calling Jamaica from the USA, Canada and the UK will also be $7 per minute. From fixed line to fixed line in Jamaica the rate will be $3.50 per minute, and $10.50 per minute to mobile phones.

Roger Richards said that the card would enable C&W to take advantage of the substantial 'calling-card' market in Jamaica, especially for long distance service.

At the press conference, C&WJ's chief executive officer Rodney Davis said the company moved into this market segment after extensive market research indicated that there was a vacuum to be filled. The entry followed the recent launch by C&W of its pre-paid land line service. Again, this move was intended to recapture market share that had been lost to cellular phones.

With this service, the monthly line rental charge is eliminated and instead, users pay a higher per minute rate than what post-paid customers are charged.
C&W says that the post-paid phone initiative has so far been a major success with some 10,000 Jamaicans signing on for this service within the first 12 days of launch - from May 31 to June 12.

Said Davis: "We at Cable and Wireless have been telling our customers for about a year now that we will be listening even more closely to them to determine exactly what they want and would be responding in ways that would break the barriers to communication in this country.

"In recent months we have responded with initiatives like the 10/8 mobile plan, homephone prepaid service and affordable high speed Internet packages - all of which have received resounding acceptance."

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