MORE Jamaicans are chatting on cellphones and using the Internet, which resulted in telecom revenues hitting a record $13.5 billion in the 2009 September quarter up 6.5 per cent year on year, according to a new Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) report.

Mobile services are provided by LIME, Digicel and Claro and total mobile revenues increased 5.7 per cent to $9.7 billion year on year, according to the OUR Telecommunications Market Information Quarterly Report posted this month. The growth in revenues was matched by a similar growth in mobile subscribers which stood at 2.87 million. This raised the country’s mobile penetration to 107 per cent of the population. Interestingly, despite the economic downturn each Jamaican bought on average $250 more credit during the review period compared with the same quarter in 2008, which raised average spend to $2,162 from $1,907.

On-Net mobile calls continued to generate the majority or 60.6 per cent of service revenues for these providers, the OUR stated. On-Net minutes increased 46.5 per cent year on year to 1.3 billion minutes. Interestingly over the period off-Net calls minutes jumped a whopping 1450 per cent to 3.6 billion minutes.

The growth of smartphone sales have aided the 23 per cent increase in SMS texting year on year to 74.5 billion units of traffic.

Claro, the newest player, has been aggressively marketing its services to increase its market share, while the largest mobile provider Digicel offered a number of promotions to hike on-minute revenues.

Internet services are provided predominantly by Digicel, Flow, LIME, and Infochan, offiering customers broadband, dial-up, pay-as-you-go, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), and mobile Internet services.

The OUR has explained that it had difficulty obtaining historic Internet statistics, which was reflected by a 993 per cent jump to $697 million in total Internet revenue recorded, but the rise was not reflected with a corresponding rise in subscriber growth. Notwithstanding that caveat, broadband Internet subscribers actually surpassed 100,000 for the first time up 16.5 per cent to 109,790.

Meanwhile, total fixed call revenues declined 9.6 per cent to $3 billion year on year. The OUR has in the past attributed this decline to mobile substitution. Fixed-call service subscriptions declined to 307,620 customers by the September 2009 quarter, representing a decline of 7.9 per cent year on year. Fixed-line service customers spent the majority of time on fixed-to-fixed calls, which accounted for 292.6 million minutes which declined 14.6 per cent year on year. The only category which increased in this service was outgoing international calls up 0.9 per cent to 15.7 million minutes. Fixed-line services are provided by two service providers — LIME and Flow — offering services to both residential and business customers with access to fixed-to-fixed, fixed-to-mobile and international calls.