Category:Communications in Jamaica

From Jamaica Wiki

Jamaica has a fully digital telephone communication system. There are three mobile operators and over 95% of the people use mobile phones.

The three mobile operators working in Jamaica are Cable and Wireless (bmobile), Digicel, and Oceanic Digital (operating as MiPhone). The Digicel mobile operator has become a generic term for mobile phones in Jamaica.

The first mobile operator in Jamaica was Cable and Wireless. They had full control over the mobile services in the country. The two other mobile operators enter the market in 2001. Digicel invested thousands to build their GSM wireless system. Oceanic developed towards the CDMA standard. Cable and Wireless use both TDMA and GSM standards an nowadays offer both on their networks.

Cable and Wireless were also the one who operated the landline phones. However their users decreased to 300,000 from over a million due to the mass mobile phone usage. Cable and Wireless introduced a new service called HomeFone Prepaid. The service is a pre-paid so that the landline users can pay only for the minutes they need instead of paying flat fee monthly fees.

Recently a new company has entered the Jamaican telecommunication market. Flow Jamaica invested into new submarine cable connecting Jamaica to the United States. This is the fourth submarine cable connecting Jamaica to the rest of the world. Flow Jamaica conducted a great marketing campaign called 'Watch, Talk, Click' marketing the rest of the services the company offers. Currently Flow Jamaica provides cable television, digital telephone and broadband internet access. Since it is a newly formed company it does not have coverage over the whole island.

The Jamaican Government licensed two more mobile operators to work in Jamaica. AT&T Wireless has one of the licenses however the company never used it. The other license is held by another company that is to provide mobile services on the island.

Telephones - main lines in use: 444,400 (2002)

Telephones - mobile cellular: 1.4 million (2002)

Telephone system:

domestic:	fully automatic domestic telephone network
international:	satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean) 3 coaxial submarine cables

Radio broadcast stations: AM 10, FM 13, shortwave 0 (1998)

Radios: 1.215 million (1997)

Television broadcast stations: 7 (1997)

Televisions: 460,000 (1997)

Internet hosts: 1,480 (2003)

Internet users: 600,000 (2002)

Internet TLD: .jm