Digicel Group on Wednesday announced that subscribers to its Blackberry smartphones could now choose between a prepaid plan or postpaid.

The prepaid service will soon be available in Jamaica, the British Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and the Cayman Islands, with final roll-out in other Caribbean and Central American markets over the next few months.

Digicel becomes the second company to offer the service, behind LIME Jamaica, which introduced the prepaid Blackberry in June, under transformation plans to remodel the company and tap into the types of services the market wants.

Branching out

Digicel has indicated that it wants to open up its Blackberry market beyond business clients for whom the email and web-browsing services are key.

Signalling that its prepaid push was really to build on its consumer market, Digicel highlighted the social-networking and instant-messaging features.

"Business users have long enjoyed the benefits of the

BlackBerry wireless solution, but now with our innovative prepaid service," said Digicel Group products director Ralf Ohlhausen, "but now with our innovative prepaid service, the benefits of a host of services like web browsing, email, instant messaging and Facebook are open to all our customers."

The company said existing postpaid customers can switch to the prepaid service.

Subscribers can opt for either a weekly or monthly plan, via text message, "providing they have sufficient credit", said Digicel.

"Towards the end of the subscription period, customers receive a text message reminding them to top up their account for the service to continue."

business@gleanerjm.com