WESTERN BUREAU – As MiPhone moves to increase its market share across the island, moving to erect cell towers in areas such as Negril, one company official has spoken of the challenge of sharing cell sites with the island’s two other cellular service providers.

“We are doing cell site acquisition and we are also doing co-location because the environmentalists and (Technology) Minister Phillip Paulwell had asked us to get together and start sharing towers. And we are working with Digicel and Cable & Wireless, where possible, to share towers as opposed to building the towers,” said MiPhone’s senior vice-president in charge of commercial operations David Palmer.

“The challenges,” he added, “are having multiple carriers on a tower owned by one carrier and somebody decides who keeps the keys to the gate, and whether or not you have access or whether or not my technology would interfere with yours – and it won’t. It is a matter of true commitment and sensitivity to the technology.”

More and more cell towers have dotted the island’s landscape over the last few years, accompanying the opening up of the cellular phone market to include Digicel and Oceanic Digital, which offers MiPhone.

When it first came onto the market, MiPhone’s main service area was Kingston. The company recently set up an office in Montego Bay and is now eyeing another tourist resort, Negril.

There have long been concerns that the proliferation of cell towers detracts from the landscape and pose a possible health risk for members of the communities in which they are erected. MiPhone has tried using towers shaped like palm trees to minimise the complaints, but those structures have received lukewarm response from residents.

The Negril tower, set for completion by the end of August, will be tree-shaped, like the one erected in another resort area, St Ann.

“Negril is a very pristine area, it’s a very environmental and ecologically sensitive area,” Palmer explained. “You don’t want to go blasting with a 180-foot tower – so why not figure out some technology that would allow you to put in a cell site as the extension of an electric pole to cover Negril?”

MiPhone has not yet carved out a significant piece of the market in the western end of the island but, according to Palmer, the company intends to significantly increase its market share.

“We have been last place so long, but we will become second place in the very near future, and there won’t be any doubt about how we got there – we are not building customers, we are building constituents,” Palmer pointed out.

Oceanic Digital now covers 75 per cent of the island, the parishes that it is yet to set up shop are Portland and St Thomas. But Palmer said that by year-end the entire island should be covered by the third communication entity.