Telecoms giant Lime has voluntarily given up the last three years of its monopoly at the Montego Bay Free Zone saying it has nothing to fear from competition.

“Whatever benefits Jamaica, benefits us,” said Lime’s chairman, Christopher Dehring, paraphrasing Charles Irwin Wilson, former CEO of General Motors, who said the same thing about his company and America in the 1950s.

“We welcome competition in the Free Zone,” Dehring said yesterday. “We’re not afraid of competition.”

However, he admitted that Lime’s revenues from the Free Zone were “minuscule” compared to the company’s overall earnings – $20 billion to the end of March, according to its latest financial results.

Phillip Paulwell, the minister of science, technology, energy and mining, said: “This development marks the last phase of the liberalisation of the telecommunications industry.”

The monopoly is a remnant of the island-wide concession granted to Cable & Wireless Jamaica in 1988, which the government started to unwind in 1999.

While scrapping those general monopolies — allowing Digicel to enter the mobile phone market — it granted new, 15-year exclusive licences to C&WJ subsidiary Jamaica Digiport International covering the Montego Bay Free Zone and any others created.

The ministry insisted that Lime received no compensation for giving up its rights.

The announcement comes three days after the OUR (Office of Utilities Regulation) decided to reduce the mobile termination rate, something Lime has long been lobbying for.

Lime’s business in the Free Zone is mainly in the ICT (information and communications technology) sector. Some 14 major operators — offering services from call centres to business process outsourcing (BPO) — have facilities in the zone, up from four in the 1990s.

The Free Zone contributed more than US$102 million ($8.9 billion) in foreign exchange earnings in the 2011-12 fiscal year.

ICT space in the zone has an occupancy rate of 97 per cent and the government hopes to expand capacity further. A 50,000 square foot expansion is planned and the Free Zone is looking at renovating existing factory buildings to bring them on stream.

A competitive market for telecommunications is seen as an attractive selling point to expanding the zone.

“This will no doubt entice investors to consider Jamaica as a premier ICT/Business Process Outsourcing destination, knowing that we are committed to their economic success, and to maintaining a regulatory framework that supports fair service competition,” Paulwell said.

Michele English, the president of Flow, part of Columbus Communications, said her company was looking forward to expanding into the zone.

Columbus already provides some services through Lime but will now be able to approach clients directly, she said.

Flow and its sister company, Columbus Business Solutions, are able to “turn on a dime”, she said, noting that a recent request from an ICT company to double its capacity was fulfilled within an hour.