ENERGY, Telecommunications and Transport Minister Daryl Vaz says Jamaicans can look forward to retaining mobile connectivity for text and short message service (SMS) in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, even while network systems are disrupted.

Speaking at the daily Government press briefing at the National Emergency Operations Centre, located at the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) on Tuesday morning, Vaz said he earlier signed licences for additional spectrum for Liberty Caribbean, the parent company of Flow, and is awaiting an approach by telecoms giant Digicel “to give them the same”.

He said the move to increase the spectrum bandwidth channels was done in conjunction with the Spectrum Management Authority.

“We know from our experience with Hurricane Beryl that the mobile infrastructure will be recovered much quicker than fixed,” Vaz pointed out, while noting that up to the time of the press briefing 26 per cent of the Digicel network was, “offline, predominantly due to the widespread loss of power”, while 209 sites were running on generators and nine on batteries.

He said for fibre-to-home customers, 20 per cent of these people were offline due to no power in their homes.

“For Flow, I am happy to say that Liberty Caribbean, operators of Flow Jamaica and Liberty Business, is committed to playing its part for Jamaica to recover quickly from the inevitable damage from the passage of Melissa,” Vaz stated.

He said Flow, from the spectrum it has received, “will be bringing new innovation, mobile connection via satellite, and this will facilitate SMS and text messages to areas affected in the aftermath of the storm”.

“So this partnership promises to seamlessly enable 4G LTE mobile customers to send texts to their family and friends even when the local network services may be interrupted. So that’s huge. This collaboration with Starlink reflects a deep commitment to the Caribbean and protecting Jamaica, so we look forward to that. And we also look forward to Digicel to give us the same, which will give us a lot more ability to communicate and to recover as quickly as possible,” he added.

The slow-moving Hurricane Melissa made landfall at 12:02 pm in New Hope, Westmoreland, with winds of 185 miles per hour. It has been dumping torrential rains across all parishes.