LIME is set to spend a large portion of the almost US$40 million they have set aside this year for upgrading their mobile network into propelling 3-G network in this resort city, as the fierce competition among telecommunication giants rages.

The announcement was made last week by Geoff Houston, LIME managing director for Jamaica and Grand Cayman during a cocktail party hosted by LIME for corporate customers at Half Moon Hotel.

“Last year, we launched our 3-G network in Kingston and it became a very popular product for us. We haven’t made any formal announcement about this yet, but this year… 2010 for LIME is MoBay’s year. We are investing probably close to US$35 million to US$40 million into the upgrade of our mobile network this year and a big chunk of that is going into launch 3G services in Montego Bay,” Houston declared during a brief address at the Montego Bay function last week. “For us it is a huge, huge committment to Montego Bay”.

The cocktail party attracted scores of the western city’s movers and shakers who were all given a bag containing a cellular phone as they were about to depart from the venue.

Additionally, 10 lucky persons won special editions of BlackBerry Bold cellular phones each after their business cards were drawn in a raffle which took place during the cocktail party.

According to Errol Miller, LIME’s regional vice-president of corporate communications, the invitational golf tournament was the culmination of a series of events which constituted an outreach programme embarked upon by the telecommunications giant to endear corporate clients in the western parts of the island, and Montego Bay in particular.

“We want to get back in Montego Bay to re-energise our presence in Montego Bay,” Miller said.