Cable and Wireless Jamaica president and CEO Rodney Davis (left) and the company's senior vice-president, marketing and communications Grant Mercer display one of the telecoms firm's promotional posters announcing its slash in mobile rates yesterday at Cuddyz in New Kingston. (Photo: Michael Gordon)

CABLE and Wireless yesterday announced a 41 per cent cut in what it charges its mobile phone customers for peak time calls into its competitors' networks, a move that is likely to lead to another round of robust competition between Jamaica's cellular telephone providers.

With yesterday's move, in what it called its 'Anyone Plan', C&W will now have a flat $10 per minute rate for inter and intra network calls between 7:00 am and 7:00 pm, its peak hours. For off-peak periods, the rate will be $8 a minute, a reduction of approximately 54 per cent.

It used to cost Cable and Wireless' customers $17 a minute for calls into other mobile networks.

These prices were up to 45 per cent cheaper than the cheapest rates offered by C&W's competitors, Digicel and MiPhone, for calls that terminate in other people's mobile networks, Cable and Wireless' boss Rodney Davis told reporters.

Charges for competitors calls terminating on Cable and Wireless phones, however, will remain the same. At the same time, however, Cable and Wireless announced a $1 per minute hike for calls within its own network, during the off-peak period - from night to early morning.

Last night, the island's biggest mobile telephone company, the Irish-owned Digicel, said it was too early to say if, and how, it would respond to the C&W initiative.

Cable & Wireless' senior vice-president, marketing and communications Grant Mercer speaking at yesterday's news conference. (Photo: Michael Gordon)

"We are looking at our responses," said the company's commercial director, Harry Smith.

Digicel, which began operating in Jamaica four years ago and has since expanded across the Caribbean, now has 1.3 million subscribers here, more than double Cable and Wireless' 600,000. MiPhone has 100,000 subscribers.

Davis became head of C&W Jamaica three months ago after the whirlwind tenure of Englishwoman Jacqueline Holding. He pledged at the time to win back market share lost by the former monopoly telecommunications provider to new entrants.

Two-and-a-half months ago, Davis unveiled a more than 40 per cent cut in Internet broadband rates and said he hoped to sign up 50,000 new broadband customers by next March.

Yesterday, he vowed to remove barriers to people using C&W's services and dangled carrots for customers to leave the competition for his company. They can trade in their handsets for new model phones at a discount.

"Whether it's cost, coverage, availability or simply poor customer service, simply too may things are getting in the way of people's need to communicate using Cable and Wireless," Davis conceded at the launch of the new service at Cuddyz Sports Bar in New Kingston.

However, existing customers will have to request the move to the new plan, rather than being changed automatically.

"For those who don't have a C&W handset we are going to make it easier for you to make your decision to come," Davis said. "We will be offering you an opportunity to trade in your existing handset from any other network that will see considerable savings on selected models of the latest cell phones."

It is unclear what proportion of call minutes by customers on the Cable & Wireless network are made during off-peak periods or whether most calls are made within the same network, making it difficult to determine the real impact the Cable & Wireless move will have on the bills of its customers.

But Digicel's Smith quickly latched on to the fact of the hike in the off-peak mobile rate, declaring: "Cable and Wireless has had its second increase in rates in a month." This was in reference to a weighted average in the increase in land line rates that becomes effective October 1, when C&W will move to a single rate for calls within and between parishes.

At least for now calls terminating on Cable and Wireless'' bmobile from other networks will still be charged accordingly by their providers. Digicel, for instance, charges $17.70 per minute during peak and $15.80 off-peak, to terminate calls on Cable and Wireless' network.

Networks that terminate calls across other networks have to pay an interconnection charge. What is unclear is whether the interconnection cost was always sufficiently lower than the new rates and whether the new charges are in fact lower than the cost of interconnection.

Smith said last night that the agreed charge for Cable and Wireless to terminate calls on the Digicel network had not been lowered to accommodate the new rate.

"We have had no negotiations to change the interconnect rate nor has it been lowered," Smith told the Observer.

Davis, the Cable and Wireless CEO, during yesterday's announcement also assured that network coverage would be maintained.

During the past 18 months his company, Davis said, has invested "more than $3 billion in upgrading and expanding our mobile network, adding more than 150 new sites and over 130 850 megahertz overlays".

"In addition, between now and the end of our current financial year we ill invest an additional $500 million in expanding and improving our GSM coverage," he said.

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