Left: Geoff Houston, LIME Jamaica country manager, says he is for number portability. Right: Mark Linehan, CEO of Digicel Jamaica. Digicel was unwilling to speak on the issue of portability.
Mobile telephone users in Jamaica should not hold their breath for an early introduction of mobile number portability (MNP) allowing them to keep one phone number even when they switch service providers.
While the issue is now being championed by Cable and Wireless Jamaica/LIME, which holds second place to market leader Digicel in terms of mobile customer base, Digicel remains mum on the idea, and the utilities regulator says the matter is nowhere on its radar for early policy consideration.
"This would not be something on the horizon anytime soon," says David Geddes, spokesman for the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR).
While indicating that the matter could be taken up by the utilities watchdog "in the long term," Geddes pointed out that it was not now on the front burner for regulatory action.
"First of all, we would have to research to determine if this is financially viable, and then have a series of consultations, and we are nowhere near conducting such a research at this time," the OUR director of consumer and public affairs told the Financial Gleaner.
Notwithstanding the non-committal stance of the regulator, LIME Jamaica, which lost its monopoly position at the end of the 1990s when the government liberalised the telecommunications sector andallowed in the Irishfirm.
Mossel - appears eager to catapult mobile portability on to the agenda of matters for regulatory action in Jamaica.
Mossel was the vehicle used by Denis O'Brien to obtain the mobile licence under which Digicel Jamaica operates.
LIME Jamaica country manager, Geoff Houston is advancing the position that allowing switching mobile users to retain the same number when they move would benefit subscribers and create a level playing field among local telecoms operators.
It is this levelling of the playing field that seems to hold inherent benefits for LIME and newest entrants, Claro, while placing market leader, Digicel in a position to lose the most; and appears ultimately to determine the position of each telecoms firm on the matter.
Digicel Jamaica now boasts of having surpassed the two million mobile subscriber mark, while LIME has about 660,000 mobile customers and Claro is at the bottom of the pile with about 250,000.
"For proper mobile number portability to work here theremust be a level playing field in terms of pricing," Houston told the Financial Gleaner.
"Unless there is that level of fairness it won't allow the Jamaican customer to exploit the full benefits of mobile number portability."
In recent months, LIME and Digicel have traded barbs, in and outside of court, over connectivity and call routing and settlementpricing, accusing each other of anti-competitive behaviour.
As he calls for mobile number portability, ostensibly in the interest of subscribers, Houston is dismissing suggestions that LIME's current position on the matter stems directly from the company having been toppled from its monopolistic top spot in the Jamaican mobile phone market.
He claims to have introduced mobile number portability to C&W's network years ago while he headed the company's Channel Islands operation in Europe, and says the United Kingdom-based telecoms firms has made use of the MNP even in markets where it is the dominant provider.
Service expected in july
Some 33 countries including the United States, Ireland, Australia and Singapore have successfully implemented MNP, while, in the Caribbean, the Dominica Republic is expected to roll out the service to its citizens in July.
Singapore is widely regarded to have pioneered portability in 1997.
The LIME executive is conceding that MNP would hit his main competitor hardest.
"Digicel definitely has the most to lose, so it is in their interest not to support mobile number portability," said Houstson.
"And this is where it gets to losing sight of the customer," he alleged.
MNP would not have been attractive to monopoly C&WJ a decade ago when Digicel broke into the Jamaican market on the back of government's liberalisation policy.
Monopolistic thinking
Said the LIME executive: "This is the traditional trait of a monopolistic thinking. Starting to lose sight of the customer, lose sight of the value offering, lose sight of offering the customer a choice and start to get awfully protective and I think that is the behavioural traits you are beginning to see in the Jamaica market."
The usually forthright and media-friendly Digicel is coy on the matter.
In an email response to questions from the Financial Gleaner Digicel's corporate affairs manager, Jacqueline Burrell, said the company would not be commenting on the issue, while Sade Powell, head of marketing at Claro, was not available for comment.
LIME meantime is not saying what its own cost-benefit analysis is throwing up and just how profitable the implementation of the technology would prove to be.
In the absence of such numbers, the benefits to be accrued to mobile phone users in terms of lower costs, is still to be ascertained.
Research in other countries has shown, for example, that if providers are allowed to pass on to customers, network upgrading, software modification, call routing and termination, database management and other operational costs, the net effect could be higher retail prices and fees.
The likelihood of mobile providers in Jamaica collaborating to share costs, and reducing the price impact on consumers in the process, is slim in the existing bitterly competitive environment.
mark.titus@gleanerjm.com