Imagine not having to watch your phone credit because it’s so cheap.

Massive savings on telecommunications services should soon be realised by consumers.

Already, carriers are gearing up to slash the cost of retail rates on mobile calls, and are planning to make changes to take advantage of local number portability, which allows you to switch carriers without having to change your number.

The Government announced that local number portability will come next May.

The regulatory agency of the telecommunications industry, the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), also announced a reduction of mobile termination rates (MTR) from $5 per minute to $1.10 per minute, effective July 1.

The change will allow customers to choose service providers based on service, quality and price rather than on a desire to keep the same telephone number.

At the same time, Digicel is planning to aggressively the fixed line market — an area that LIME dominates, and at which Flow is chipping away.

The operators of Flow says with number portability,consumers will be the real winners.

“Business customers that previously resisted switching providers in order to take advantage of more robust and advanced technologies and greater cost efficiencies will be able to do so more readily with number portability,” said Michele English, president of Columbus Communications Jamaica.

Mobile phone usage is changing dramatically, and is such a way that telecommunications is becoming cheaper for users.

“One of the big realisation that we have is, data is more important, voice is going down and data is going up,” said Barry O’Brien, Digicel Jamaica CEO.

It means that quite possibly, local carriers will begin conceptualising the types of efficient and affordable data plans and mobile offerings they can make to consumers.

But when number portability comes on stream next year, following the expected drastic reduction in phone call rates, the Government expects that it will be easier for entry into the market by new players.

MTR is the amount carriers pay to terminate calls on the other’s network. Invariably, this will lead to even lower retail rates for telephone customers.

For example, when the OUR dropped the MTR from $9 to $5 last year, LIME and Digicel cut mobile rates by as much as two-thirds, while Flow cut the cost of calls to mobile phones from its digital landline by 30 per cent.

It is not quite clear how much lower they will go now but the companies are assessing the figures and will announce new rates.